Shadows of a Cataclysm
by Lightwavers
Summary: No one has heard from Berk in months. Jiod, a self-styled adventurer, travels to its location, only to find that the Berk we know is gone, replaced by an island surrounded by fog, with an enormous dragon nesting on the island, along with her flock. *NOW COMPLETE*
1. Chapter 1

**This is an old story of very low quality. It's only here as a monument. You have been warned.**

* * *

Jiod finally stopped waging war with the sails of his skiff, not because he'd given up, but because he was too horrified—or amazed, it was hard to tell which—at the sight that finally met his eyes, now that he had finally navigated through the thickest banks of fog surrounding the island. Deep, low roars penetrated Jiod's consciousness, causing him to shiver even in the hot, muggy air infesting the area. Huge flocks of dragons swarmed the skies for what seemed like miles in every direction, circling the island. However, what first caught Jiod's attention was not the ominous tornado-like mass of flying dragons, but the... _thing_ so large that he could only get a good look at parts of it at a time through the fog; a wall of grey scales here, the leathery fold of a wing there, a glimpse of a claw there—no wait, it was only a _tooth_...

Closing his mouth with an audible _snap_ , Jiod decided firmly that he what he was feeling fell firmly into the horrified category. Wrestling with the ship again—the fog seemed to have currents just as strong as those that could be found in the sea—he tried to strike a balance between stealth and getting away. Getting away won out, shouting _Hurry hurry hurry it'll see you hurry it'll catch you hurry._

"So that's what happened to Berk..." he said once he was at a distance where it was safe to think clearly, shocked to the core. Berk had always been the island with the most insane, tough, and battle-hungry Vikings in the entire archipelago, which was saying something, as there were Vikings called the Berserkers with a leader who had Deranged in his name.

A strange cross between a rumble and a shriek pierced the fog's dampening effects and scattered Jiod's thoughts, sending him scrambling for his crossbow, praying whatever it was wouldn't find him. The skiff finally slid into the rays of the bright midday sun, dissipating the foul atmosphere imparted by the cursed island. Another strangled shriek sounded right next to the small boat. Jiod licked his lips, sweat shining upon his brow. Making small half steps so that he would be ready in case anything attacked in the millisecond he lowered his crossbow, Jiod approached the side of the ship, slowly looked down—and almost collapsed in relief. It was only an infant Deadly Nadder, easy enough to get rid of.

Jiod aimed his crossbow and readied himself to fire the moment it so much as twitched its tail. Nadders could be extremely subtle when they wanted to; he should know, one had sent a spike through his shoulder when it had turned, spreading its wings as if to fly away, and flicked its tail in an incomprehensibly tiny motion. Only Jiod had seen the bolt, time slowing around him until it hung almost still in the air. In that moment, he'd been completely helpless, unable to even cry out before it would hit. Jiod did not deal well with feeling helpless, and ever since then Nadders were the first dragons he targeted. But… he didn't want to be the first to attack a baby, no matter that it was a dragon and he was mentally screaming at himself to _kill the thing before it burns the boat to ashes!_ and a less intelligent part of him was just screaming. After a few minutes of staring on both sides, he looked into its large, yellow eyes, the pupils narrowed in fear, aimed... and decided to wait until it caused trouble before doing anything to it. A _fter all, if I attack first, it might get a good fire going on the ship. Better to wait for it to tire itself out and fall off..._ Jiod moved back to the sails, which had finally begun cooperating after moving away from the former island of Berk. However, the image of the little Nadder clung to his thoughts. It had looked awfully thin, with its limbs looking like frail sticks, and showing ribs. For some reason, this thought didn't appeal to him. He soon shook it off after imagining the chaos the news of Berk's fall would cause. There was a certain saying about the messenger being shot...

Many long hours of sailing first led to Jiod imagining horrible scenarios in which dragons invaded and took over every island in the archipelago, flaming any unfortunate Vikings that happened to live there, then to images of huge dragons hatching out of islands as if they were giant eggs, and then, eventually, to boredom. When night first started to fall across the sky he started searching for a handy island to tie down his skiff for the night. When the last light of the day fell, Jiod found a small island, really nothing more than a large rock, to tie his boat to. As he tied the knots with the skill of a seasoned sailor, he looked down and saw the small Nadder still clinging to the side of his vessel, looking at him with large pleading eyes.

Jiod quickly finished tying his boat down and tired to sleep, but couldn't. Vikings usually had the ability to sleep at the drop of a hat, no matter whether the sun was shining and they had just been rowing frantically, or if they had just gotten up from a good night's rest. Jiod finally gave up and started to pace the deck, thinking about anything but the little dragon that had been clinging to his boat all day, probably starving, hungry enough to climb up and _impale_ him on those nasty spikes… Jiod shuddered.

"This is so stupid..." he said. He wasn't _afraid_ of a hatching that would probably die if he crushed it beneath his boot.

Taking a deep breath, Jiod carefully climbed out of his skiff and onto the edge of the rock. The little Nadder was now at eye level, and seemed to be looking at him with an air of resignation.

"You're going to bite my hand off, aren't you?" Jiod said to the dragon.

The dragon gave a weak chirp. Jiod wasn't going to kill it just because he was… justifiably concerned. He needed a reason, or it would be unprovoked killing of an innocent. Even if that innocent was a dragon, and any other Viking would yell at him to just get _on_ with it already, and then snort at Jiod for being too slow and chop the dragon's head off themselves.

"Well, here goes... something." Jeod brought his free hand under the dragon, and pulled—only to realize that although it was small, it was still quite heavy. "Come on now..." he braced his feet against the boat and the rock, leaving him in danger of falling into the water, but with both hands free.

Cupping them together, he put them under the Nadder, and heaved, finally prying it off the hull. The boat rocked, and he barely clambered back aboard without falling.

"Phew! Well, that was definitely something," he said, lying on the deck and panting slightly from adrenaline.

The dragon gave another chirp, and closed its eyes. Jiod started, then forced himself to relax. It couldn't hurt him; it didn't even appear to have the spikes of an adult Nadder on its tail. He looked down at it more closely, and frowned. Its ribs were showing way more than he'd seen on any dragon in his travels, or raiding his village. Jiod was tempted to let it starve, but he abruptly decided he needed to confront his fear. Vikings were all about confrontation, and he couldn't confront his fear if it died. In fact, he decided, it was probably a message from the gods.

Jiod strode to the back of his skiff with an attitude of assumed unconcern, but watched the Nadder out of the corner of his eye for any movement. He reached down and pulled a handle disguised as a warped plank, revealing a secret compartment full of three huge sacks and a smaller pack. Jiod reached into the pack he and grabbed a fish. He turned around, and, seeing the dragon fast asleep, placed it in front of its nose. Jiod then lay down on in the boat. Eventually he fell asleep, though he tossed and turned the entire night.


	2. Chapter 2

"Ahhhhh!" screamed Jiod.

"Cheeeee!" replied the Nadder, making a high-pitched noise just as loud, and jumped off its comfortable perch—which happened to be Jiod's hair.

"Don't look at me like that. _I'm_ not the one _sleeping_ in your _hair_!" he said in response to the little Nadder's reproachful look, grateful that he routinely cut his hair short. The Nadder just kept staring. Finally, Jiod sighed, saying "Well, guess we'd better be underway. Gotta make sure everyone knows about... Berk." After a brief inner struggle, Jiod turned his back to the dragon to unmoor his vessel and set the skiff heading towards the direction of his tribe's island, determined to ignore the Nadder.

§

The Delloc tribe's ancestors had, long ago, the luck to pick a huge island, filled with lush rainforests, which they named Somin, to colonize. Beneath the thick vegetation was the perfect land for farming and grazing animals. This led to the inhabitants being the most peaceful and trade oriented Vikings in the archipelago. With the threat of the land burning and every other tribe losing most of their food source, even the most desperate Vikings wouldn't dare stage an invasion. Somin had a location close to Berk, and when a trading boat sent to Berk failed to reappear after several days, they decided to take action. Jiod was the natural choice to investigate, as almost everyone else in the village was completely sedentary.

The day was bright, warm, and everything living seemed to be glowing with an inner fire. As he disembarked with a baby dragon dozing on his shoulder (Jiod wasn't sure how he felt about this; sure it was facing his fear up close and all, but it was really, really closer. And those claws...), Jiod felt the weather was the opposite of what it should be. After all, an entire neighbouring island had been overtaken by dragons and was now cursed, and one of the dragons was now attached to him like some sort of pet. He wasn't sure how anyone else would take the news. His tribe would probably be fine with the dragon, since they rarely ever raided the Dellocs, instead going after closer villages. However, they might disbelieve him about Berk, causing him to lose his status in the tribe, low as it was already. They could pretend to disbelieve him so they wouldn't have to take action, they might actually take action and get obliterated by a dragon army, or, worst of all, split their opinions, causing utter chaos until everything got sorted out, which would probably be never.

As he contemplated the things that might happen if he just announced this to anyone, Jiod's steps slowed, and finally stopped. Maybe he should just forget about it. After all, it was probably a hallucination brought on by two days of sea travel. After being in the bright airy atmosphere of his home island again, anything bad seemed as if it had to have been a dream. The fog's malicious currents faded in the bright light of the sun and the sharp edges and deep shadows of the giant creature became dulled and grey in his memory, until Jiod could almost convince himself that he simply witnessed the inhabitants of Berk in the middle of a dragon raid...

"Maybe I shouldn't say anything," he said to himself.

A sharp chirp emitted from his shoulder, a harsh note that seemed to disagree.

"I mean, it wouldn't do any good, really."

The chirp came again, louder, this time accompanied by a small nip on his neck. Jiod's axe was in his hand in a flash and the Nadder on the ground quaking. Reluctantly, he sheathed the axe.

"I'm… sorry, you're right," Jiod told the dragon, feeling ridiculous about talking to it as if it could actually understand him. He sighed. "I'm just… it's… Nadder's aren't my favourite things. Not your fault." Jiod held his hand out to the Nadder. "You can go back on." The Nadder refused his waiting hand, turning her nose up at it.

Jiod started thinking again. To avoid a split in the tribe, he'd just tell the chief, alone... a prospect that always made him nervous. Chief Adon wasn't a particularly large viking, but as soon as he entered a room you could pinpoint his location and mood without even looking. He always gave anyone he looked at the feeling that they had been judged, and found wanting.

Well, that was a problem for when he could be found. Jiod resumed his walk up the docks, this time sure of his course of action. After reaching the point at which the wood of the docks turned to the gravel of a path, he could see the homes of his tribe, unlike those of any other. Without the constant threat of being raided or flamed by dragons, houses were inherited like axes or helmets would be in other tribes, and each generation added something, whether it was an entire extra floor or just a shiny rock was entirely up to them, and left the entire village looking as if the vikings had forgotten that stuff was supposed to go inside, and had instead glued their possessions to the outside walls. For outsiders, it seemed bizarre, but for Jiod it was home.

The village seemed almost empty, as most vikings were probably out working the fields or herding sheep. However, there was one person he knew would always be there, and he went straight towards her house. The Nadder squawked at his increase in pace, and Jiod slowed down. The shape of the house looked like a huge tree with a door, and beside the door he saw Keillna. She was the oldest viking in the village, and spent most of her time outside, knitting. Jiod felt comfortable speaking to her, mostly because she was completely blind.

"Elder Keillna!" he said, and bowed. She always knew when someone wasn't showing proper respect, blind or no. "I need to see the chief. It's important."

"Jiod? You're finally back!" she replied, smiling warmly a fraction to the left of where he was. "Adon's in the great hall right now."

"Thanks! Got to go, see you later!" he bowed hurriedly in parting and started sprinting in the direction of the great hall.

Jiod arrived panting, looking up at the huge doors that loomed above him. They were adorned with gold, rubies, and silver runes in an unknown language that twinkled at him in the bright sunlight. The doors were perfectly balanced, and thus deceptively light and easy to move. This always made him privately feel as if the building wanted to eat him. Swallowing, Jiod started to open the doors. The fate of every Viking tribe in the area could lie on the outcome of this conversation...

* * *

 **You may have noticed I've discarded any geography or tribes in the books. I don't consider most of the episodes canon, and haven't read the books in a long time, so decided the only thing I'm definitely keeping in this AU geography-wise is Berk and the island of the red death.**


	3. Chapter 3

The interior of the great hall was always lit with dozens of large torches mounted everywhere, casting light on detailed engravings on the walls containing images of Vikings in various heroic poses and the uniquely designed shields adorning every wooden pillar. In the very back of the hall stood chief Adon, deep grey eyes flashing as he confidently dealt with every issue the villagers lined up before him gave him. As Jiod positioned himself at the back of the line, he became aware that everyone was staring at him. Even the chief had stopped addressing the Viking in front of him to stare at Jiod—or, more specifically, his shoulder. Oh, right. The Nadder had suddenly started flapped her wings and hissing at Jiod when they reached the great hall until he'd put her back on his shoulder.

The Nadder gave a chirp. Jiod shifted uncomfortably, not looking up into anyone's eyes for fear of what he'd see in them. However, despite getting quite a few odd and suspicious looks, the Vikings attention eventually returned to the chief, who, despite clearly being curious about Jiod's new 'pet'', put rest to the villager's problems with the ease of long practice. Soon, Jiod was standing in front of the chief. After looking around to make sure they were alone, Jiod began his explanation.

"Hey, chief, about Berk… it... um—" Jiod began, when the usually patient chieftain cut him off.

"How did you learn how to control the dragon?" he asked, impressed, holding his hand in front of it as if to make sure it was real. The Nadder hissed and snapped at it, but despite being one of the most agile species of dragons the infant could not match the speed of a Viking chieftain's practised reflexes, and the hand was snatched away.

"Um... I found it at Berk," Jiod said. "I don't really control it, I think it was given to me by the gods to help me control my… impulses towards Nadders."

Adon paused. "I think you'd better tell me the whole story, lad," he said at last.

"Well... I found Berk, but it was covered in fog. When I got through it, I saw tons of dragons using Berk as a nest, and an enormous dragon, bigger than any I'd even imagine existed, just... there." Jiod paused for breath, and Adon looked as if he desperately wanted to question him, but stayed silent. Seeing this, Jiod continued, "Anyways, I didn't want to get any closer, seeing as there were all these dragons. So I got out of there as fast as I could, but heard something. I looked on the side of my boat, and that's where I found... this." Jiod gestured to the baby Nadder perched on his shoulder.

"That's quite a story, m'boy, but are you certain you didn't get confused and find the dragon nest instead?" asked Adon, clearly hoping he had. Although the Delloc tribe did not fight dragons as a way of life as most other tribes did, they sought out the nest as much as the other Vikings. If they found the nest, they'd be able to sell its location to the highest bidding tribe, who'd then have glory in an infinite supply for getting rid of the archipelago's dragon problem for good.

"Chief, you know I'm the best navigator in the entire tribe!" Jiod snapped, forgetting to be nervous or respectful with his hard-earned skill in question.

"Hmm... well, even the best can make mistakes. Have you ever heard about that time I nearly caused a war between—"

" _Chief_! I'm sure!" Jiod said, thinking Adon would soon get over his disbelief and decide to get all the tribes to unite into one big army to take back Berk.

"Jiod, you've had a rough journey. You should probably get some rest while I discuss this with the council." Adon strode towards the exit of the great hall. "Make sure your new pet doesn't burn anything important," he said over his shoulder, then left.

"Well, looks like you're going to be an official part of the village," Jiod told the Nadder. He couldn't quite believe it—although it was true that his tribe wasn't as into killing dragons as the others, no one would hesitate to behead one the moment it was spotted. Jiod decided the acceptance was due both to the Nadder being a hatchling that looked to be just out of the shell, and to its presence on Jiod's shoulder.

Jiod exited the hall shortly after the chief, blinking in the bright light of the sun. He'd have to explain the Nadder to the rest of the village soon without revealing Berk's plight, but for now decided to take the chief's advice and rest; he _had_ had a rough journey, although most of his exhaustion stemmed from stress rather than physical exertion.

§

Jiod's home was rather small. He took after his ancestors with both his superhuman nautical abilities and habit of spending most of his time at sea or exploring distant uncharted islands. This led to his home being more of a shack than any other on the island, especially with his mother departed years ago to follow up on "one last trade", and his father left soon after to investigate her disappearance. Neither of them had returned.

The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon, and Jiod felt another huge yawn tear itself from his chest.

"You'll need somewhere to sleep, too," Jiod said to the Nadder. It blinked at him. Jiod's brow wrinkled as he thought, then the perfect solution came to him. Jiod lifted the Nadder from his shoulder and placed it in the fireplace. It chirred at him. As he was tossing a fish from the stores at the dragon, the absurdity of what was going on finally hit Jiod.

"I have a dragon as a _pet_. The ultimate enemy of all vikings, acting like a hunting hound or something." Jiod laughed. "Well, since you're with me for now, I've got to give you a name. Can't just keep calling you 'you' all the time." After a lengthy moment of contemplation, Jiod spoke to it again. "Holly. I'll call you Holly. Unless you turn out to be a male Nadder, in which case I'll feel very foolish." The nadder gave a long "chirrrrrrrr" and closed its eyes. "I'll take that to mean you like it," Jiod said. "We have a lot of explaining to do tomorrow... well, I do anyways. You can just chirp at everyone and look cute." With that, Jiod fell on to his own lumpy bed and was out like a torch.

§

Jiod suddenly awoke to a Nadder crawling on his face.

"Ack! Gerroffme!" he said, panicking. He finally caught hold of her and held her above his face. "What's wrong with you? The sun's not even up yet!" Paying more attention, he noticed she was breathing in short, quick gasps, and her eyes were darting from side to side. She was terrified out of her mind. "It's ok Holly, it's ok," Jiod said in a soothing voice, stroking her as he would a startled cat, and wondering what could have terrified her so. He got his answer a moment later.

The door to his house burst open with a loud crash, and in trooped three burly Vikings wearing full body armour. Two of them were guards who he didn't really know, but the one in front—it was the chief!

"Chief Adon? What are you doing here?" Jiod asked, more confused than anything else. He could have waited until a more reasonable hour to ask him questions—and why the escort?

"I'm sorry, Jiod. We can't have you distracting people with your lies. You're leaving." said Adon. One of the guards took his axe and prodded Jiod with its pointy tip.

"But... why?" Jiod asked, his eyes tearing up slightly both with the pain of being prodded with a very sharp weapon and from the actions of the chief he so admired.

"You heard him. And keep quiet," said the guard, prodding him again.

Jiod stumbled forward and turned slightly, which allowed him to catch a view of the other guard holding on to Holly with one hand and about to bring his axe down on her with the other.

" _No!_ " Jiod shouted, forcing his way towards the Nadder with a strength born of desperation. He shoved the guard back. The guard just looked bemused, not understanding why Jiod wanted a _dragon_ , of all creatures, to live.

"Let him keep it," Adon said, now looking bored. "You'll need to keep it fed as well as yourself," he warned Jiod.

§

The group approached the docks. Jiod's skiff looked to have been restocked with enough food to keep him at sea for at least a week if he rationed it. Jiod was forced on to the skiff, and his boat was untied.

Adon stood close to the little boat and looked Jiod in the eyes. "Jiod, you are hereby banished, never to return... on pain of death."

Jiod found his voice again, and repeated his earlier question. "Why..." he whispered.

Adon paused, and looked back over his shoulder. "It's... complicated. You wouldn't understand. Know that it had to be done... for the good of the tribe." he said, regret infusing his voice, and walked away. A guard shoved the skiff away, watching to make sure he left.


	4. Chapter 4

Sailing at night was never easy. It was made even less so by the storm of emotions raging in Jiod's chest, threatening to overwhelm him and send him curling to the deck in tears, but he was able to suppress them long enough to find a small island a respectable distance from Somin and tie off his boat. Although a free-roaming explorer at heart, Jiod had always had the comforting knowledge that his tribe was at most a few days of sailing away, ready to supply him with whatever he needed to continue his voyages, and full of other Vikings his age who accepted him without question. To have the security of a tribe who accepted and provided for him his whole life yanked away without warning was... shattering.

Jiod felt something catch at the back of his throat, and he couldn't seem to get a full breath. His limbs shook slightly whenever he moved them, and something welled up from his chest, spreading throughout his whole body. All at once, Jiod felt tears emerge from his eyes for the first time since the age of seven, hot and heavy against his skin.

A soft chirp reached his ears, and Jiod looked down to see Holly rubbing against his shins and purring. The comforting action coaxed a watery smile from behind Jiod's tears, and he bent down and scratched behind her ears as he would a cat.

"At least I still have someone," he said. Soon, the faintest rays of the sun could be seen exploring the sky, lightening it to a dull grey.

"But... what now?" Jiod said, looking out across the ocean. As he did, he realized how much his actions were tied to his tribe. Without one he felt lost and without a purpose. Bitterness suffused him. They had no right to exile him. He did as much for the tribe as any other Viking, or more. His journeys had led the tribe to unexpected wealth more than once, such as that time he'd found a downed night fury on a distant island and killed it, bringing back a corpse worth a small fortune, if sold to the right buyer. Maybe... maybe if he brought back proof of Berk's fall... and a solution to it...

"It's worth a shot," he said to himself. But before Jiod could untie the boat, he felt a drop of rain from above, followed quickly by another, and another. Before he knew it, a full-blown storm was thundering across the sky.

"No, no, no, no no no no!" Jiod went to secure anything not nailed down, knowing it would soon begin to hail. Large chunks of ice fell from the sky, shattering on the deck. He finally abandoned his efforts when one hit him on the forehead, making a large gash and leaving him cross-eyed.

"Argh! Time... time to go..." Jiod said, gathering up Holly, chirping in distress, into his arms, and stumbled off the ship onto the island. It was heavily forested for an island so small, and they found ample cover under a stand of large trees with exceptionally broad leaves.

"I really should have brought my helmet," said Jiod, rubbing his forehead and wincing with pain. He leaned back against a large rock with the Nadder in his lap, suddenly feeling drained. Ships always needed to be secured properly, or they ran a large risk of being damaged by hail, and supplies took the chance of being soaked with the heavy sheets of rain that drenched everything. Waiting out the storm felt like torture to Jiod. Boredom warred with anxiety, causing a constant, pulsing headache in his skull. When the rain finally started to thin, Jiod picked up Holly and _ran_ towards his ship.

At first glance, everything looked all right. Jiod had managed to seal the supplies before they really got wet, and the skiff didn't appear to be taking on water. However, when he tried to raise the sail, he noticed a major problem. The top of the mast was split and pockmarked, clearly now unable to hold any weight. It looked like a large chunk of hail had smashed straight into the mast, causing the split, and shattered. If he was going to go anywhere at a pace faster than rowing speed, Jiod needed to replace the entire mast. This meant he'd need to explore the island for a suitable tree, cut it down, and make it into a mast. The whole process could take anywhere from a few days, if he was lucky, to a week, if he wasn't.

Jiod placed Holly on the prow of his ship. "Think you can pull sentry duty while I scout the island?" he said to her. "If you see anything, make a sound like you did when you first found me." For a moment, Jiod could have sworn he glimpsed a flicker of comprehension is the Nadder's eyes, then shook his head and told himself he was being ridiculous.

Even though it was small for an island, the island was large enough to get lost in the forest if he wasn't careful. Jiod took a spiral route around the island, starting at the edge and notching trees with his axe as he moved inwards. A few hours of gradually more frustrated searching led him to the rough centre of the island, which he couldn't distinguish from the rest of the island whatsoever, and contained not a single tree that would even make a mediocre replacement as a mast. Jiod continued searching for another half hour after that, convinced he must have missed something, before finally admitting defeat.

"What am I going to do?" he groaned. "It would take weeks to row anywhere civilized." There was still Somin, but he was banished, and to be seen there would be a death sentence. Still, an idea grew in the back of his mind... but he wasn't desperate enough to act on it quite yet.

After making the long trek through a forest thankfully free of predators, Jiod arrived at his ship in a bad mood. A scowl on his face, he stalked aboard hot, tired, full of scratches, abrasions, burrs that stuck to his clothing and wouldn't come off, and seriously considering going back to his tribe and stealing whatever he needed from the storehouses. A welcoming chirp and a streak of scales and spines barrelling towards his chest at high speed drove all other thoughts from Jiod's mind. The force of the Nadder's jump knocked him over, and he ended up sprawled on the deck with an eager dragon frantically licking every inch of his face it could reach.

"Holly, stop! "Holly, stop! That's disgusting," disgusting," Jiod gasped, finally prying her away. Although pretending to be cross with the dragon, Jiod was secretly cheered up by the fact that at least someone was still happy to see him. "Maybe I can combine the top half of a tree with the bottom half of the old mast somehow," he said, knowing it wouldn't work, yet still feeling rather optimistic.

Before Jiod could really consider other ideas, he was distracted by spotting another ship of unfamiliar design rounding the island, not a hundred yards away. It looked like a Viking fishing boat, but sported rows of shields on either side and a frontal cannon mounted on the prow. Before he could decide whether or not to draw its attention, it changed direction, heading directly towards Jiod's skiff.

"Looks like they've seen us," he told Holly, who just continued to purr at him. Jiod decided the best course of action was to simply wait, although he'd have to hide Holly somewhere—some Viking tribes would stop at nothing to slaughter a dragon, even if they had to go through another Viking first. Jiod finally decided on putting the Nadder in one of their nearly empty food baskets, with the lid slightly popped open to allow her to breathe and still have a narrow view of what was going on. The Nadder was uncharacteristically silent, allowing Jiod to put her in the basket with minimal fuss. Her large eyes gazed around from inside, looking frightened.

"Don't worry, you'll only be in there for a little bit... hopefully," Jiod said, and proceeded to get out of the boat and approach the point where the other ship was most likely to dock. It was soon tied off and left by two large and burly vikings, one holding an axe, the other a sword.

"This is supposed to be our secret island," complained the one holding the sword. "If we wanted other people here we would have invited them."

"I'm... sorry, but I can't exactly leave. My boat's damaged, and—" began Jiod.

"Excuses!" she shouted. Jiod was not one to back away from a fight without following it through to the end, but the ferocity in her voice caused him to take an involuntary step backward and draw his axe up in a stance halfway between a defensive position and a non-threatening one.

"Don't mind her," said the other Viking. "My sister's a bit... possessive," he continued with a smirk in her direction.

"Couldn't you see I was _busy_?" she said, irritated.

"Wait, I have an idea," he said, and then turned to Jiod again. "Oh yeah, manners. Never was good at those. I'm Ikhelt, and this is Freva. Nice to meet you, I think. I'm not gonna shake your hand."

"Jiod," Jiod replied, feeling confused.

"Great! Now... Jiod, I happened to hear that your ship is broken. We could get you off of here... for a price," said Ikhelt. Freva gasped, and then smiled.

"That was _smart_. You're _never_ smart!" she said, and gave her brother a friendly punch on the shoulder.

"Yeah, well, I have my moments. So hows about it?"

Jiod considered it. Having them pick up his skiff and bring him somewhere he could get a new mast would be an excellent solution, but it had a problem.

"I'm afraid I really don't have anything too valuable... unless you consider fish valuable," he told them.

"It depends... how _much_ fish is it?" asked Freva.

"I have a couple large baskets full of them," he told them.

"Sweet! We could get a whole day off instead of fishing with that much," she said, grinning. "Show us the goods and we have a deal." They shook hands to seal the agreement.


	5. Chapter 5

Jiod had been dreading having to somehow acquire a mast and get another ride back to the island to repair his skiff, but Ikhelt had the bright idea of tying Jiod's skiff behind their boat. When Jiod inquired as to where they were going, the response was "Anywhere that looks interesting!" At least Jiod could let Holly out on the deck with the tugboat arrangement going on.

The reason Jiod didn't use a larger boat, aside from his preference for being alone on voyages, was how slow they were. It took hours for the island to disappear from view, although at first Jiod had the entertainment of listening to an argument about what to do with him. From the conversation, Freva seemed adamant on dropping him off the next time they spotted land, while Ikhelt seemed to think that Jiod might be a god in disguise, and that helping him would lead to a mountain of gold appearing at their feet.

Jiod gave a faint smile. If it enabled him to complete his journey, he decided he'd let them think whatever they wanted to think.

"So, what do you wanna do in the meantime?" he asked Holly. "Squaaaaak," she said. She'd somehow discovered the secret compartment in the skiff and flipped it open, then tore through the ropes holding a sack and swallowed a fish. Jiod groaned; he didn't have much rope left, and if the Nadder kept ruining it at this rate he'd soon have to ask his new benefactors for spare. The solution would be to simply leave the fish where Holly could get them, but she seemed to think if it wasn't a challenge it wasn't worth her time, instead busying herself shredding more important things, like the rigging she inevitably got tangled in. Holly swallowed another fish and her spines flexed in the sunlight, giving Jiod an idea.

"You stay there for a second," he said, and turned around and began rooting around in one of the non-food bags until he found what he wanted—a small square of sailcloth, meant for patching holes in the sails. He unfolded it and cut out a circle with his axe. Inefficient, but part of his training had been to learn fine control over his weapons, leading to him slicing bread and cutting his hair with his battleaxe. It was now a matter of habit to use it when something else would have sufficed, and sometimes _because_ of it. Next, he walked up to the bottom half the mast, which was still mounted on the boat, and used all three of his daggers to pin the circle of cloth on to it.

"It's a dart board!" Jiod told the curious Nadder, feeling inordinately pleased with himself. Holly crawled up to it, and sniffed, then reached towards the handle of one of the daggers.

"No, you're supposed to shoot it, like this," said Jiod, and stood a few steps away, then flung his axe towards the mast, intentionally missing and hitting just above the cloth so as not to create a huge split in it. The nadder looked confused.

"Come on, you guys are supposed to be shooting spines from the egg," he told her. "Or at least, if my grandfather's stories are true," Jiod continued under his breath. He gestured towards her spines, and then towards the mast. Finally, she seemed to get it. Spines unsheathed with an audible metal on metal sound, and her tail flicked up. A hoard of tiny metallic shards flew at the mast impaled themselves on every place on the boat _except_ the mast. Jiod winced, a visceral reaction triggered by the sound of the spines being released, a hiss-pop followed by a sort of… shimmering noise, a sound akin to what silver was to the eyes.

"Guess aim comes with practice," said Jiod, forcing his shiver into laughter with effort. Holly made an upset squawk and unleashed another volley, which again went nowhere near the mast. The Badder turned her snout up and then stalked away with her back to Jiod until she got close enough to a basket of supplies and then dove behind it.

§

"Come on, try again. You'll get it soon enough," he said, trying to coax her out of hiding with another fish. Now that he'd seen how uncontrolled the Nadder's aim was, he felt he needed to correct it as soon as possible, else she'd probably hit something important. Or him. Holly eyed the fish. After a moment of indecision, she came out and snapped it up in one gulp. "Gotcha!" said Jiod, grabbing her and warily stroking her bristling spines until they retracted and she started purring again. As his finger ran down the dragon's back, he felt a catch, as if one spine had grown backward, and suddenly a volley of spikes flew from Holly's back, peppering the deck. Jiod looked across his boat and finally realized how many spikes had accumulated everywhere. Jiod jumped back with a shout, but didn't drop Holly. One of the spines had passed so close to his face he'd felt the wind of its passage against his cheek.

Holly danced in his hands and angrily shot a spike behind her. Jiod, exasperated, was about to tell her that you needed to actually _aim…_ then looked at where the shot had impacted. In the exact middle of his makeshift target stood a single thin metallic sliver.

"That's called bull's eye," he said to Holly, shaken.

§

The next day brought a rather strange sight. At first, Ikhelt and Freva thought their spyglass had a smudge on it. However, it soon became clear that what they were seeing as real, and they proceeded to board Jiod's watercraft.

"Hey Jiod, wake up. You won't believe what we found," said Ikhelt.

"Why are you hoarding mini Nadder spikes?" interrupted Freva, looking at the small pile of them on the deck.

Jiod, having just woken up, cursed himself for leaving them out in the opening. "Uhhh... well, our tribe is trying out using Nadder spikes as arrowheads," he said, thinking quickly.

"Right, fascinating," said Ikhelt. "But we found something _better_. Look!" he handed the spyglass to Jiod and pointed him in the direction of the strange thing in the middle of the ocean. It looked to be a floating shipyard, with wooden structures that could be anything from homes to shops clustered together in the middle.

"Wow. That's... wow. Are we going to it?" asked Jiod, who couldn't quite believe that he hadn't found something so exotic and close to home in all his travelling.

"Of course!"

"Definitely!"

"Are you really suggesting we miss the chance to visit a _floating village_?" said Freva, with a grin that looked ridiculous on someone with such a large frame, seemingly having forgotten about her intent to get rid of Jiod as soon as possible. The siblings always looked like they should be guarding a prison or something based on their appearance, but listening to them speak for a few seconds was enough to dispel any air of solemnity.

"You couldn't keep me away from that for a pile of gold," said Jiod, smiling back at them. "Besides, they might be able to fix my boat."

"Oh yeah... definitely, the boat," said Ikhelt.

"That's why we wanted to tell you about it, of course. The boat," agreed Freva.

Jiod rolled his eyes, feeling as if they were the friends he used to play with when he was younger, and still had real friends.

The boat inched into the artificial harbour, docked, and was promptly exited by three excited Vikings.

"We should go to that building thing first, it looks important," said Ikhelt, pointing at a building of ambiguous function crouched next to the path from the section of docks they were on to the inner part of the 'village'.

"Maybe we should just ask someone where to go. The place is swarming with people," said Jiod.

And it was. There were many people roaming the docks, all armed with various weapons, but clearly not Vikings. None of them had the horned helmets of Vikings, and their weapons were either rusty, which no self -respecting Viking would ever let happen, or engraved with fancy runes and carvings. Despite completely different in looks, every person emanated a grim, practical aura, which rather curbed the Viking's desire to ask them what to do.

"Welcome to Nero's Ship Shop!" one of the more nondescript men who had been standing next to the newly docked ship suddenly spoke up with a voice of authority. "Normally, I'd get someone to show you our wares, but right now we're a bit tight on materials. So, we'll be taking yours. Don't be tempted to do anything foolish."

Immediately, most of the people roaming the docks took out their weapons and pointed them at the Vikings, faces devoid of pity.


	6. Chapter 6

"Hah! Even the weakest Viking could take dozens of _foreigners_ in a fight," Ikhelt said scornfully.

"Hmmm... is that so?" Nero replied.

"Yeah! We'll kick every one of you back to whatever land you came from," Freva said confidently.

Nero just smiled. He reached down to his waist and took out an object that looked as if it might be an ornate handle. Nero held it in a way that suggested he felt completely at ease with it in his hand. On seeing the Vikings looking baffled at him holding such an obviously useless object, his grin widened.

"I so do love dispelling ignorance. If you try to put up a fight, I'll have to give you an explanation," he said, his tone leaving no doubt as to what he meant by 'explanation'. Jiod finally spoke up, feeling as if something was about to go terribly wrong.

"Hey, maybe we should let them have some of the stuff on the boat," he told his new friends. "We'll stand a better chance if we have the element of surprise," Jiod added in a whisper.

"Just making a suggestion," he mumbled at seeing their incredulous stares.

Nero still stood at ease, waiting for them to make the first move.

"Make your decision soon, if you would. We're wasting daylight," he said, glancing meaningfully up at the sun.

"Oh, that's it. I'm putting an axe in that loony foreigner," said Ikhelt, and stepped towards Nero, who pointed the pointiest part at Ikhelt, although it still looked quite flat and dull.

"No you don't! Get back," said Freva, and yanked Ikhelt back by his tunic. "I remember now! Remember that island where the tribe shot poisoned darts at us with those blow tubes?"

"So _that's_ your game," said Ikhelt, unconsciously rubbing his left arm. "I couldn't move anything hit by one of those darts for hours," he finished, and then directed his most venomous glare at Nero, who looked a bit put out.

"Not quite, but close enough," Nero admitted. "I must say I am quite impressed with you for even getting that close."

Meanwhile, Jiod inched back toward the ship and started to discreetly pick at the mooring ropes with his axe. They soon began to fry, and Jiod felt cautiously optimistic—they might actually get away from this. When the ropes felt like any more pressure would cause them to snap, he nudged Freva, then pointed towards them.

"No. Wait," she silently mouthed at him, then spoke up so Nero could hear her. "Alright, you and your crew can take whatever valuables you find aboard, but only if you leave us and our ships intact."

"I don't think you're in any position to bargain, You see, I have the negotiating power here. I could sink your ship, or blow you all to pieces before you knew it," he said, clearly exaggerating.

"Oh yeah? Well then... Get aboard!" Freva shouted. She then quickly bent down and picked up a large plank from the deck, holding it in front of her like a kite shield. _Smart_ , thought Jiod. With such a shield, no dart would be able to paralyse them, no matter how good a shot Nero was. Jiod and Ikhelt quickly scrambled aboard the ship and crouched down against the bulkhead so as not to provide a target. Freva jumped aboard a second later and severed the ship's moorings with a single strike of her axe, thanks to Jiod's earlier sabotage.

However, Nero's crewmen didn't just stand and stare. A dozen skiffs similar in design to Jiod's were launched immediately and formed a blockade in the harbour exit. The rest of the crew flung themselves at Ikhelt and Freva's ship, but due to a combination of luck and the Vikings having a tendency to cut the fingers off anyone clinging to the side, no one made it aboard.

They were free for a moment of any more attacks, and the ship glided serenely towards the line of skiffs awaiting them.

"We're going to have to ram them, but we can't pick up enough speed with your boat attached like this," said Ikhelt. "We're going to have to cut it loose."

"Wait," Jiod said desperately, and ran towards the back of the ship, the part closest to where his skiff was trailing along behind.

"Holly! Holly, come here! Holly!" he shouted, almost blind with panic at the thought of losing his new companion to what would probably be slow torture and a painful end at the hands of pirates.

A turquoise and gold scaled form popped into view, and gave a loud and fearful chirp, sensing Jiod's terror. Giving a large breath of relief, Jiod leaned forward and stretched his hands out until they were nearly half of the distance between the two linked boats. Holly gave her wings an experimental flap, tensed, and jumped, flapping all the while. Her aim was spot on, for once, and she landed perfectly into Jiod's grasp, allowing him to pull her onto the larger vessel and start chopping at the connecting ropes with his axe until the boat was free of the dead weight. Jiod scooped Holly back up, ignoring the indignant chirp that meant she was in the middle of exploring a new and fascinating environment, and ran towards the wheel in order to witness the outcome of the gambit that would be the difference between escaping or staying to endure the tender hospitality of a band of pirates that probably make them pay for their escape attempt.

"What's _that_?" asked Ikhelt, momentarily distracted by Jiod holding a baby Deadly Nadder.

"Pay attention, moron," said Freva, giving Ikhelt a light slap on the back of the head. "But seriously," she said to Jiod, "why is there a _dragon_ on you?"

"Long story. Well, longer than we have time for..." Jiod told them. They looked at him expectantly. "I'll tell you everything later," he promised.

The Vikings were dragged back to reality when an impact rocked the ship.

"What was that?!" Jiod shouted.

"Don't know. Go check," said Ikhelt, trying to find the perfect place to ram the blockade.

After Jiod moved away, he spotted a huge shiny ball heading straight towards the side of the ship. A moment later another impact rocked the boat. When he looked over the side of the boat he saw a huge gaping hole that was quickly taking on water.

"Hey! They have catapults that shoot boulders made of _metal_!" Jiod said.

"I can tell. We won't be able to make it," replied Ikhelt. Freva brought up her axe and makeshift shield.

"We're going to be boarded soon," she said in a voice that seemed too calm for the situation.

No more shots were fired at the ship, but the damage was done. It was taking on way too much water. The blockade of skiffs could see this and advanced in a wave, shadowing the ship on either side. Pirates leapt onto the boat, and this time there were too many boarders to stop.


	7. Chapter 7

**Interlude**

On a wreck of an island shrouded by fog, subjugated by a dragon straight out of legends, a boy finally woke up. _What... where am I?_ he asked himself, feeling confused. He picked himself up from a small clearing of grass filled with burnt and blackened husks of former trees, looking around in confusion. _What am I doing here? Shouldn't I be...some_ _where else_ _?_ he asked himself. His mind refused to supply an answer. Growing frustrated, he tried to think of the last place he knew... and couldn't. Frantic now, he searched his mind for anything— _anything_ that would tell him who he was. He could remember things such as what typical Viking weapons looked like, that he _was_ a Viking, working in a forge, fighting dragons, but when he reached for anything more, nothing came.

"Ugh! This is useless!" he yelled, and kicked a tree stump, then gasped in pain. It was way more solid than it looked, and angry words flew from his mouth, bringing the knowledge of profanity. The boy found he had quite an extensive list of profanity. His mind quickly fell into thought again, trying to find out who he was—and to his chagrin, discovered he couldn't even recall his own name.

The boy without a name trudged through the devastated forest. He knew that dragons had most likely done this, although he had no idea how. The monotony of the place was getting to him. He picked up his pace, desperate for any kind of change in scenery until he stumbled upon the gorge. It had somehow survived almost untouched with only a few blackened impacts on the ground and scorched vegetation. The place felt familiar to the boy, and he stopped at the edge of one of the cliffs, desperately trying to recall where he'd seen it before. He was about to give up when something flashed through his mind—rushing wind, a fall, a sense of happiness despite the pain, something beside him, something black and scaled—and then it ended as quickly as it had begun.

He looked into the gorge, searching for a way down. Any clue to his identity had to be thoroughly investigated. Walking around, he noticed a gap between the rocky cliffs sloping downwards. It would have been an uncomfortably tight squeeze for anyone with a larger frame. The boy cautiously stepped down the grassy slope that got steeper the farther he down he went. A feeling of nostalgia crept up on him and pounced, smothering him with the feeling that he'd gone down this natural passageway innumerable times before. Unbeknownst to him, his steps grew firmer and more confident, leading him down to an object he knew would be there, wedged between the narrowed exit into the gorge. He stared at the circular shield that still stood, ravaged by time. The wooden centre had rotted through, leaving peeling gaps and giving off the impression that it would fall apart with the lightest touch. The metal rim bore signs of severe corrosion and rust, and some of the iron studs had completely given way.

The boy carefully ducked under the shield, wary lest he accidentally destroy the only artefact he knew to be from his past. _Clumsier than a drunk and blindfolded southerner_. Words from a past he couldn't remember intruded into his head, along with a sensation of shame, of failure. Shaking his head to clear it of that unwelcome remembrance, he set about exploring the gorge for any more clues. After a thorough search, all he found was an abandoned quill, the remnants of campfires, and strange round objects, black as night and harder than steel as far as he could tell. None of these objects brought any memories to him, and boy gave a frustrated cry and flung the quill into the small river that flowed lazily through the gorge.

The boy glanced at the river, and then froze. A distorted reflection looked back at him, features indiscernible except for his form, tall and thin, and his eyes. His eyes... they were a bright hazel, reminding him of another pair of eyes that were reflections of his, large and full of silent laughter.

"Toothless! No!" Hiccup cried. The reflection of his eyes caused a barrier to crumble and fall away from his mind, a barrier he realized he himself had put there to lock away the pain that came with coming to terms with what he'd known all along. He could remember everything. Everything—from his discovery of Toothless, bundled up and helpless in the woods, to their eventual friendship, so strong they would do anything for each other, to... to the disaster. The day everything ended, the day all the hope, all the light, all the joy life brought became limp, lifeless, stale. The memories replayed in his mind, and he stood witness again, helpless to stop them.

§

"Come on big guy... it's ok, I'm not gonna hurt you," Hiccup told the monstrous nightmare in his most soothing voice. "Look... I'm not one of them," he said, his voice hardening. With one swift movement, Hiccup yanked the horned helmet from his head and tossed it aside, heedless of the gasps from the stands in the kill ring.

"Stop the fight!" came a voice from the stands. Hiccup ignored it, reaching out his hand towards the nightmare's muzzle, who stood still, entranced.

"I said _stop the fight_!" Stoik bellowed, bringing his hammer forward onto the bars separating the spectators from the fighters, using all his impressive strength. Even one handed, his strike left the solid iron bar, meant to withstand everything from torrents of fire to two tons of dragon clambering over it, severely warped.

"No!" Hiccup shouted, but it was too late. The moment was lost, and the monstrous nightmare flamed up and began chasing Hiccup all around the arena, snapping at his ankles. The only reasons he was still alive were the flood of adrenaline brought on by his body's _I'm going to die!_ instincts and the reflexes required to survive so called 'dragon training'.

A whistling sound that everyone present recognized as a Night Fury winding up for a full strength blast caused the Vikings to instinctively duck down, seeking any shred of cover. A purple bolt of plasma impacted on the top of the arena, blasting the iron apart as easily as it would toothpicks. A dark form streaked into the arena, snarling and full of vengeance for any who would _dare_ harm his rider. Toothless engaged in a ferocious fight with the nightmare. The pair rolled across the floor of the kill ring, snapping at each other, Toothless's teeth fully unsheathed. The veteran dragons skilfully batted each other's jaws away from each other with their paws.

The vikings finally obeyed Stoik's earlier command, getting over the shock of seeing a night fury for the first time in history, and swarmed out into the kill ring like bees out of a hive that had just been cracked in half. Although Toothless put up a ferocious fight, Hiccup's plea for Toothless to leave Stoik alive distracted him in a critical moment. Just like that, the dragons were taken under control, and Hiccup was locked away, to be dealt with later. _Who are you to change this world?_ his mind told him scathingly. _Silly boy. No one needs to hear your words_.

§

Hiccup led the rest of his dragon training class with him to the dragon's nest, hoping against hope they weren't too late, training the dragons in the kill ring to take them as riders himself. The dragons accepted because of Hiccup's behaviour in dragon training. His habit of giving out dragon nip and massages had the other dragons snarling at the Monstrous Nightmare if he made a move to attack.

Upon arrival, Stoick barely saved Toothless from drowning, giving Hiccup the encouragement he needed to lead the dragon attack on the Red Death. "I'm proud," he told him, clasping his hand, "to call you my son."

Toothless and the other mounted dragons at first attacked indiscriminately, hoping to get the hint of a weakness from the Red Death. A gruesome combination of exhilaration and pure terror gripped the riders for at least a full hour as Toothless peppered the Red Death's wings with innumerable shots, (his lack of a shot limit allowing them to experiment with different attack styles) blasted its eyes with powerful bolts, got a few hits in its mouth as it was about to fire (which only seemed to make it dizzy, and then immensely angry), and once even got one in an enormous nostril, but no matter what they tried nothing they did seemed to make a difference.

Eventually, the Red Death seemed to grow frustrated at not being able to catch them itself. With a screech, it summoned the dragons who had all fled moments before into a whirling tornado of death and destruction, and unleashed it upon the few Vikings who still hadn't been crushed, incinerated, or drowned when the boats burnt down. The riders knew their only chance was to retreat, and flew back in the direction of Berk, terror and despair weighing them down. However, the Red Death was not about to let them get away that easily. It led the flock of dragons along with it, slowly overtaking the mounted dragons one by one, bringing them into the hoard where they disappeared and did not emerge, their fates unknown. Soon the only pair left were Hiccup and Toothless, who had not been flying at their maximum speed in order to stay next to the others, Astrid and Stormfly.

"Hiccup! Get Berk to evacuate! I'll stall them, go!" she said to Hiccup, and nudged Stormfly who immediately dove straight down towards the ocean before he could respond. Toothless whimpered, expressing Hiccup's thoughts perfectly. A clump of dragons detached from the mob following them and streaked towards Astrid and Stormfly. If Hiccup didn't look, he could pretend not to see the pair valiantly struggle against their captors before being dragged into the swarm.

§

The exhausted pair landed on Berk at most a few minutes before the storm of dragons did. Hiccup's efforts to evacuate the village came to nothing when the hoard swooped down upon them, and the Red Death herself got comfortable in the ashes of the village.

Hiccup knew they'd left it too late, but they still tried to get away. "C'mon bud, you can do this, you can do this," he urged his exhausted companion. A small pack of Nadders flew towards them, unleashing spines and fireballs left and right. Toothless' scales could withstand any amount of fire, but eventually a lucky hit on Toothless' artificial tailfin left the pair crippled over the island. Toothless roared, terrified, and tried to make a semi-safe crash landing, but his remaining fin wasn't enough to stop a fatal impact.

The world spun around Hiccup. He didn't scream; he was in too much shock. The pair tumbled to earth, the impact throwing Hiccup from the saddle and on to the hard-packed ground.

"Tooth...less," he choked out, feeling blood bubble in his lungs. _Rib probably punctured a lung_ , he thought with clinical detachment.

The Night Fury gave a pitiful groan. One wing was snapped, bone showing through. The wing was nearly torn from his body, never to be used again. A far more severe injury ensured he would never move from his current location again, his scaleless belly pierced by the stump of a tree. The dragon inched towards Hiccup, who was rapidly falling into unconsciousness from combined shock and blood loss, heedless of his own wounds.

Right before his fading vision, Hiccup witnessed the worst thing he'd ever seen in his life. His beloved companion's scales sloughed off and crumbled to dust first, then the rest of his body seemed to turn to obsidian, then crumbled. The dark tint drained from the dust of Toothless' body and seemed to stream into Hiccup. Barely clinging to consciousness, the last thing he heard was in the form of a low, echoing growl that he somehow understood. It meant sorrow, and loss, and pain so deep that the volume of a dozen oceans couldn't hope to measure it, but it was also tinged with hope and the desire to see things put right.


	8. Chapter 8

Holly felt unsure. Ever since she'd escaped the nest, humans had been the only other living creatures she'd had contact with. So far, she'd let Jiod interact with the other members of his species. However, even the dragon could see the situation looked grim for the Vikings. Holly could always send out a mental distress signal to any dragons in the area, but that would result in being captured in the new nest again. Torn for too long, the decision was taken from her as the pirates boarded the Viking's sinking ship, forcefully bringing them aboard separate skiffs. No one had done more than glance at Holly so far, perhaps thinking her some kind of exotic Viking pet.

§

"Do you know how long it took to scrape the remains of that stupid ship out of the harbour?" a cold voice came from outside Jiod's cell, echoing slightly in the sealed building that was their jail.

"Hope it took you all night," Jiod muttered.

"I will _cook_ and _eat_ that animal," Nero told him. Something told Jiod this wasn't an empty threat.

"Why are you here, then?" Jiod asked, subdued.

A sigh. Then—"Information. We need to know more about those gigantic rocky hummingbirds. You tell me voluntarily, no one gets hurt," he said in a voice that clearly implied what would happen if he didn't answer voluntarily.

"They're dragons," Jiod said. "Pretty strong, good amount of fire, but critically slow. Happy?"

"Dragons... don't make me laugh. Those things look _nothing_ like dragons. _I_ would know..." Nero said darkly.

Jiod didn't trust himself not to say something he'd regret and settled for glowering at the bars. Nero walked back into his view, but this time turned to face him. He had the sun-tanned skin of a southerner, and this time around sported a belt with two of those what Jiod now suspected were dart shooter tubes from what Freva had said. On Nero's back lie a scabbard that held two swords in an X shape. However, now that Jiod had a chance to really _look_ at the man, he could see something more. A faint aura of deep weariness surrounded Nero no matter how much he tried to hide it and seem completely in control. It showed itself in the details; silver eyes that shone with slightly less spark than normal, rimmed with red, the way he slightly slouched whenever he stopped moving, the slow and precise movements associated with the drunk and the very tired.

"Whatever. We'll call them dragons then. How do you fight them?" he asked.

Jiod shrugged. "Hit 'em with an axe hard enough and their skulls will split. Use a shield to block their fire. Move faster than they can."

Nero narrowed his eyes. "If you're lying, I will make you suffer for it," he promised.

"Fine," Jiod snapped. He wasn't lying, precisely, just... not elaborating.

Nero turned away again, ready to leave, but stopped and whirled around.

"What are you doing?!" he snarled at Jiod.

"What? I—nothing!" Jiod said, honestly bewildered.

"That noise... they're attacking!" Nero said, ready to run out and help the rest of his crew. At that point, Jiod could hear it too. At first it sounded like one huge wingbeat, and Jiod feared that the monster he'd seen on Berk had come after them. When they got slightly closer, Jiod could distinguish the distinctive hum of Gronckle wings, and the separate nuances of different dragon wings making up the huge wingbeat. Even knowing a swarm of dragons was coming towards him, Jiod still breathed a silent sigh of relief. Anything was better than that monster. A resounding crack reverberated through the small room, and the two humans looked up as the entire roof of the structure was torn off, Jiod with awe, Nero with a curse. Neither noticed the Nadder's expression. Her pupils had become mere slits, and her body stood frozen, except for her head, which had been slowly tracking the progress of the approaching dragons.

The roof was flung away to land somewhere else with a huge crash, revealing so many dragons above that the sky was obscured except for some small gaps. The dragons hung above the humans and Holly for a moment, and then dived in one eerily synchronized movement, grasping everyone and lifting them into the air. Jiod couldn't quit hyperventilating and quickly looked away, but not before getting a glimpse of the huge floating shipyard—well, its remains. The huge construct was made almost entirely with thin metal sheets holding thick wooden slabs together. The wood didn't flame easily, but the whole thing was carpeted with dragons who didn't care where their flame went, and fires were already popping up all over the place. Huge holes in the hull led to listing to the side, and bubbles constantly emerged from the surrounding waters. The dragons appeared to have taken anyone living into with them, for what purpose Jiod did not want to contemplate. All of a sudden, the whole flock suddenly decided it was time to leave, and took to the skies as one.

"Argh! Let me _down_ you overgrown reptile!"

And he had to be picked up with Nero of all people, who was acting like he _wanted_ them to plummet to their death.

"Don't antagonize it!" Jiod shouted at him over the rushing wind. The Zippleback carrying them punctuated Jiod's statement with a low growl as if agreeing. Nero seemed momentarily silenced, then spoke up again as if Jiod hadn't said anything.

"What are these things anyway? Scaled, mutant birds?"

"Nero. Shut. Up," Jiod said. He couldn't shake the feeling that these dragons could understand them, and didn't want to get killed from Nero's stupid insults. One of the dragon's heads bent down towards Nero and breathed a large amount of gas into his face, Jiod to wince in sympathy. He knew first hand how harmful those gasses could be to the lungs. However, to Jiod's astonishment Nero simply waved it away from his face as if it were nothing more harmful than mist.

"Aha! Silarions!" he shouted, sounding amused. "Must be mutant breeds, never seen any this pathetic before." Jiod almost yelled at him again, but froze, his eyes widening as he saw a large fog bank rolling towards them. The only place he'd seen such thick... _malicious_ looking fog had been at Berk. Holly suddenly popped into Jiod's head, and he let out a gasp. He needed to get her out of here. She had almost starved last time she was here, only living by the luckiest roll of the dice, the chance that Jiod would be there when he was. Jiod whipped his head around, fidgeting in the dragon's uncomfortably tight claw grip, but couldn't spot a single scale of Holly's. Maybe she was being carried by another dragon.

He happened to look to Nero, who had been unusually quiet, and was immediately wary of the calculating look in his eye. Nero glanced at Jiod and shook his head slightly, making a confusing gesture with his hands, and then took to staring back at Berk with his measuring gaze. The Zippleback swooped down closer to the island, skimming the remnants of a razed forest. Nero had his strange dart tubes in his hands. Jiod couldn't help but wonder what he meant to do with them. Maybe he was looking to shoot out the dragon's eyes?

The Zippleback slowed slightly and dropped to an altitude only a few yards to the ground. At this moment, Nero made his move. The man's hands erupted with thunder and lightning, and a ringing invaded Jiod's head. The sound affected the dragon the worst, and its heads gave confused, pained warbles. The Zippleback's paws dripped with blood, and Jiod caught the strangest sight he'd seen—two of its claws appeared sheared off, as if it had glanced the edge of a boulder flung by a catapult at close range. Jiod looked down and saw Nero making quick, practised actions with his hands. Mere moments later, he brought both hands up, took aim—and with a roar, Jiod was finally free. The Zippleback screamed, limping away with its mysteriously obtained wounds. Jiod eyed Nero's hands as he nonchalantly placed them back in their holsters. Were they _smoking_? Then Jiod thought to look around, and groaned. They'd gotten the dragon to drop them off in the wilderness. It could take any amount of time to find a way out of it. Jiod agonizingly thought of Freva, Ikhelt, and Holly, still in the hold of the dragons, and with a heavily armed pirate captain to deal with before he could start a search.


	9. Chapter 9

"This—this is a silarion nest!" Nero spat with disgust. "How could Vikings not notice a silarion nest?!"

"We've been fighting _dragons_ for centuries. We can take it," Jiod corrected impatiently. "The real question is how we'll rescue everyone and escape without getting killed."

Nero looked at Jiod with an expression akin to pity. "No one survives in a silarion nest for long. Anyone captured will be taken to the queen for consumption immediately. The last time I was this close... well, let's just say you won't be leaving like I did."

The fog surrounding the island had not intruded onto the island itself so far, conspicuous in its very absence. However, rolling banks of roiling mist now moved inward, accompanied by a distant roar.

"Something's certainly got her distracted," said Nero, frowning slightly. He only prevented himself from chewing his bottom lip in contemplation through years spent training himself out of the habit. Although it took a lot to hurt him, Nero healed slowly, and had found that his own teeth or fingernails could often do more damage than the sharpest sabre, not counting the blunt trauma that accompanied such blows.

"So maybe someone _did_ escape," said Jiod, annoyingly excited.

"No. Some _thing_. She's been issued a challenge," said Nero, worried. "This whole island could be submerged."

"There are _more_ of those things?" Jiod said, and immediately regretted asking, not wanting to know the answer.

"Either that, or a silarion is the challenger. But the silarion breeds that were capable of challenging have all but died out ever since queens banded together to target them. That... that was a dark time. Be glad that there are very few queens left."

"Stop _hinting_ at things! You're leaving me with more questions than you're answering," Jiod said heatedly.

"Force of habit," said Nero, his attention already moving on. "Well, we need to at least _try_ to get you off this island."

"Me... you know what? I give up. But when we're out of here, you're going to tell me everything. And I mean everything," Jiod said.

Nero moved off with a distracted "mmmh," his long strides forcing Jiod to jog to keep up. The strange duo soon reached the edge of the devastated forest, only to be confronted with the strangest spectacle Jiod had ever seen. The Red Death was cowering down against a storm of dragons—her _own_ dragons!—who were hurling firebolt after firebolt at the behemoth, twisting, turning, ducking, and dodging the endless streams of fire she launched at the suddenly traitorous swarm. At first, neither Nero nor Jiod noticed the small human figure standing confidently in front of the Red Death's embattled position.

"What is he _doing_?" said Jiod.

"What... oh," Nero said, finally spotting him. "I... don't know."

"Well then, let's go find out!" said Jiod, and shuffled off towards the unknown person, attempting to be sneaky.

"You're going to die," Nero said impassively. Jiod ignored him. Nero sighed and strode after Jiod.

As they got closer, they could see there was something strange about the boy in front of the dragon. For one, he was whirling a stick over his head and bellowing like a madman, but the strangest thing about him was how he _glowed_. Shadows seemed to surround him, yet they illuminated his form instead of obscuring it. Nero frowned, his expression inscrutable. After a few minutes of just watching, Jiod became aware that his jaw was hanging open idiotically, and closed it with an audible snap.

The Red Death screeched in pain. Craters the size of dragons peppered her body, and her wings were completely wrecked. Volley after volley of fire penetrated more deeply with every passing second. The Red Death finally stopped her useless defence and lunged at the boy, but it was too late. Her body actually glowed with heat, and she seemed to melt. The queen gave one last hatred-infused scream, and was gone.

The boy continued bellowing until a Monstrous Nightmare landed on the ground next to him. The rest of the dragons dispersed into the skies. The boy leapt onto the Nightmare's back and flew off before Nero or Jiod could attempt to talk to him, and was gone from sight within moments.

"What... what..." Jiod said, struggling to say something coherent.

"I don't know either," said Nero. "Looks like you get to live, though. Congratulations."

Jiod frowned at him. "You're way too calm. How do you know so much about dragons? I thought southerners didn't have them."

"We don't have _silarions_ anymore," Nero corrected. "We used to. We still have dragons, but they're extremely hard to find, and harder to get any answers from."

"I bet they'd be easier to get answers from than _you_ ," Jiod said pointedly.

Nero looked like he'd been slapped, then masked himself with an indifferent expression. "It's not worth the time it'd take to tell you. Leave off. We need to focus on getting off this island, not arguing."

Jiod gave Nero an exasperated look. "Fine. I'll check the docks. They might've left a ship intact."

"You know this place?" asked Nero.

"I'll tell you as much as I know about it... as you told me about what you know. So, in other words, screw you," said Jiod.

"Fair enough," Nero responded, seeming almost… cheerful. Jiod sighed. Nothing he did seemed to bother him for more than a few seconds.

§

The docks were completely destroyed. The only clue to their former existence lie in a few splintered fragments of wood drifting in the water.

"Well, we're stuck here," said Jiod.

"Boats can be built," said Nero.

"Right. But it'll take a few days to build one, and by then your city ship thing will have sunk."

"It's probably sunk already," said Nero.

Jiod stared at him. "Do you even care? Your crew is probably _dead_. Does that really mean nothing to you?"

Nero's masked slipped. He looked... agonized. "Of course I do, but I see no point in crying over an upended torch." And just like that, the slip was gone. Nero's face looked as if it could have been carved of marble.

§

After many days of painstaking effort in Jiod's case, or effortless movement on Nero's, the boat was finally built. It was cruder than Jiod would have liked, but it would do until they could sail into a port. Jiod furiously forced his makeshift oar to move the hollowed-out hunk of wood through water which seemed to push them back more force the harder they rowed. He looked at Nero and saw that he was actually having to _work_. That along defied comprehension; there was _nothing_ that Nero couldn't do with deceptive ease.

"If these currents get any stronger, we'll be forced to shore," Jiod warned. His words soon proved prophetic.

No matter where they launched the boat or how hard they rowed, they could not get more than a couple dozen yards away from the island. They tried to add various modifications to speed it up, including spending a week on making a sail, which proved to be more trouble than it was worth, as there was absolutely _no_ wind. It seemed as if the fog, which hadn't cleared out the least bit with the queen's death, wanted to keep them on the island.

"It's no use," said Jiod. His shoulders had recently seemed as if they'd taken on a heavy weight that never let up, but he still visibly sagged after their latest failed attempt. The hopelessness of the situation seemed to have finally hit him.

"I... might have a way," Nero said. For the first time, he seemed hesitant. "It might not work, and I'd sworn never to do it, but... maybe, just this once…"

"Did you swear to the gods?" Jiod asked, completely serious.

"No... just my, er, sister."

"Then do it. It's not like we stand to lose anything," said Jiod.

"You have no idea," Nero gave a humourless chuckle. "But I'll need your help."


	10. Chapter 10

"This—this is a silarion nest!" Nero spat with disgust. "How could Vikings not notice a silarion nest?!"

"We've been fighting _dragons_ for centuries. We can take it," Jiod corrected impatiently. "The real question is how we'll rescue everyone and escape without getting killed."

Nero looked at Jiod with an expression akin to pity. "No one survives in a silarion nest for long. Anyone captured will be taken to the queen for consumption immediately. The last time I was this close... well, let's just say you won't be leaving like I did."

The fog surrounding the island had not intruded onto the island itself so far, conspicuous in its very absence. However, rolling banks of roiling mist now moved inward, accompanied by a distant roar.

"Something's certainly got her distracted," said Nero, frowning slightly. He only prevented himself from chewing his bottom lip in contemplation through years spent training himself out of the habit. Although it took a lot to hurt him, Nero healed slowly, and had found that his own teeth or fingernails could often do more damage than the sharpest sabre, not counting the blunt trauma that accompanied such blows.

"So maybe someone _did_ escape," said Jiod, annoyingly excited.

"No. Some _thing_. She's been issued a challenge," said Nero, worried. "This whole island could be submerged."

"There are _more_ of those things?" Jiod said, and immediately regretted asking, not wanting to know the answer.

"Either that, or a silarion is the challenger. But the silarion breeds that were capable of challenging have all but died out ever since queens banded together to target them. That... that was a dark time. Be glad that there are very few queens left."

"Stop _hinting_ at things! You're leaving me with more questions than you're answering," Jiod said heatedly.

"Force of habit," said Nero, his attention already moving on. "Well, we need to at least _try_ to get you off this island."

"Me... you know what? I give up. But when we're out of here, you're going to tell me everything. And I mean everything," Jiod said.

Nero moved off with a distracted "mmmh," his long strides forcing Jiod to jog to keep up. The strange duo soon reached the edge of the devastated forest, only to be confronted with the strangest spectacle Jiod had ever seen. The Red Death was cowering down against a storm of dragons—her _own_ dragons!—who were hurling firebolt after firebolt at the behemoth, twisting, turning, ducking, and dodging the endless streams of fire she launched at the suddenly traitorous swarm. At first, neither Nero nor Jiod noticed the small human figure standing confidently in front of the Red Death's embattled position.

"What is he _doing_?" said Jiod.

"What... oh," Nero said, finally spotting him. "I... don't know."

"Well then, let's go find out!" said Jiod, and shuffled off towards the unknown person, attempting to be sneaky.

"You're going to die," Nero said impassively. Jiod ignored him. Nero sighed and strode after Jiod.

As they got closer, they could see there was something strange about the boy in front of the dragon. For one, he was whirling a stick over his head and bellowing like a madman, but the strangest thing about him was how he _glowed_. Shadows seemed to surround him, yet they illuminated his form instead of obscuring it. Nero frowned, his expression inscrutable. After a few minutes of just watching, Jiod became aware that his jaw was hanging open idiotically, and closed it with an audible snap.

The Red Death screeched in pain. Craters the size of dragons peppered her body, and her wings were completely wrecked. Volley after volley of fire penetrated more deeply with every passing second. The Red Death finally stopped her useless defence and lunged at the boy, but it was too late. Her body actually glowed with heat, and she seemed to melt. The queen gave one last hatred-infused scream, and was gone.

The boy continued bellowing until a Monstrous Nightmare landed on the ground next to him. The rest of the dragons dispersed into the skies. The boy leapt onto the Nightmare's back and flew off before Nero or Jiod could attempt to talk to him, and was gone from sight within moments.

"What... what..." Jiod said, struggling to say something coherent.

"I don't know either," said Nero. "Looks like you get to live, though. Congratulations."

Jiod frowned at him. "You're way too calm. How do you know so much about dragons? I thought southerners didn't have them."

"We don't have _silarions_ anymore," Nero corrected. "We used to. We still have dragons, but they're extremely hard to find, and harder to get any answers from."

"I bet they'd be easier to get answers from than _you_ ," Jiod said pointedly.

Nero looked like he'd been slapped, then masked himself with an indifferent expression. "It's not worth the time it'd take to tell you. Leave off. We need to focus on getting off this island, not arguing."

Jiod gave Nero an exasperated look. "Fine. I'll check the docks. They might've left a ship intact."

"You know this place?" asked Nero.

"I'll tell you as much as I know about it... as you told me about what you know. So, in other words, screw you," said Jiod.

"Fair enough," Nero responded, seeming almost… cheerful. Jiod sighed. Nothing he did seemed to bother him for more than a few seconds.

§

The docks were completely destroyed. The only clue to their former existence lie in a few splintered fragments of wood drifting in the water.

"Well, we're stuck here," said Jiod.

"Boats can be built," said Nero.

"Right. But it'll take a few days to build one, and by then your city ship thing will have sunk."

"It's probably sunk already," said Nero.

Jiod stared at him. "Do you even care? Your crew is probably _dead_. Does that really mean nothing to you?"

Nero's masked slipped. He looked... agonized. "Of course I do, but I see no point in crying over an upended torch." And just like that, the slip was gone. Nero's face looked as if it could have been carved of marble.

§

After many days of painstaking effort in Jiod's case, or effortless movement on Nero's, the boat was finally built. It was cruder than Jiod would have liked, but it would do until they could sail into a port. Jiod furiously forced his makeshift oar to move the hollowed-out hunk of wood through water which seemed to push them back more force the harder they rowed. He looked at Nero and saw that he was actually having to _work_. That along defied comprehension; there was _nothing_ that Nero couldn't do with deceptive ease.

"If these currents get any stronger, we'll be forced to shore," Jiod warned. His words soon proved prophetic.

No matter where they launched the boat or how hard they rowed, they could not get more than a couple dozen yards away from the island. They tried to add various modifications to speed it up, including spending a week on making a sail, which proved to be more trouble than it was worth, as there was absolutely _no_ wind. It seemed as if the fog, which hadn't cleared out the least bit with the queen's death, wanted to keep them on the island.

"It's no use," said Jiod. His shoulders had recently seemed as if they'd taken on a heavy weight that never let up, but he still visibly sagged after their latest failed attempt. The hopelessness of the situation seemed to have finally hit him.

"I... might have a way," Nero said. For the first time, he seemed hesitant. "It might not work, and I'd sworn never to do it, but... maybe, just this once…"

"Did you swear to the gods?" Jiod asked, completely serious.

"No... just my, er, sister."

"Then do it. It's not like we stand to lose anything," said Jiod.

"You have no idea," Nero gave a humourless chuckle. "But I'll need your help."


	11. Chapter 11

Jiod sighed. He missed Holly. Why was quite a mystery, since that little dragon freaked him out just by twitching her tail. She had an indefinable quality that made Jiod feel like she was always supposed to be near him, like one of those companion parrots pirates always had.

"Penny for your thoughts," Nero said idly. Speaking of pirates…

Jiod glared at Nero, saying nothing. He wasn't too keen on Nero's idea of getting them out of there, but saw no other choice. Any other Viking with sense would just sail away when they spotted the unnatural fog. Still, Vikings typically lacked sense… sadly, even if they did make landfall they'd just be in the same boat.

"Silver penny. Wouldn't dream of offering anything less to a viking," he continued.

"Just... just stop it. Stop. I have to deal with _slicing you open_ and you're just being so... so _flippant_ about it."

"It'll heal. Eventually. Well, unless you're actually _trying_ to kill me," Nero said in a bored voice, like he'd considered the possibility, deemed it a valid outcome, and then... didn't care.

Jiod sent Nero a death stare. Nero just continued sitting against his chosen log. After an interminable wait, Nero finally got up. "Well, let's get back to that village. We've got the sand."

"I might, you know," Jiod said, ignoring Nero's previous statement. "Kill you I mean."

"Why?" Nero asked without a trace of anger.

"Well, this entire thing is your fault. If you hadn't sunk their ship and locked us up, none of this would have happened," he said.

Nero strode up the rocky mountainside, adroitly avoiding rocks which could have slid down, obstructing forward progress. "Is that _really_ what you think?"

The village was pretty much obliterated by the massive amount of dragons that had been nesting in it. Houses were burning crisps, walls were knocked down by careless tails, and anything left standing looked as if a breath would blow it down. However, the only thing Jiod and Nero needed—the forge—was still standing, probably because of its relatively small size and the fact that it was made entirely of stone slabs.

"Perfect," Nero observed with satisfaction.

"Of course it's what I think," Jiod continued their earlier conversation as if nothing more than a brief pause had gone by.

"Then tell me... what would be different if, instead of taking it over, I let your ships dock in my harbour and repaired the small one?" Nero's said reasonably, as if he was explaining in simple terms to a child that ' _you are wrong and this is why._ '

Jiod paused. "Well... well obviously, we wouldn't be there when the dragons attacked."

Nero paced away from the intact furnace, knowing he'd have to resolve this before getting into the intricacies—or rather, the basics—of the art of forging. "Why wouldn't you be there? Did you not wish to repair the skiff? Was the only reason for docking in my harbour curiosity?"

 _I could lie_ , Jiod thought. _I could say it_ was _pure curiosity..._

"No... I wanted my boat repaired."

Nero's tone went from mildly curious to downright annoyed in a heartbeat. "And you don't see how that would stop you up for days? And don't say your friends would have left. Even if they had, it wouldn't matter to _you,_ whether you believe it or not."

Jiod stopped. If Nero was telling the truth... then Jiod simply could not _comprehend_ the man. He spoke like he truly believed what he said, like he actually thought Jiod didn't really care about the fates of Freva and Ikhelt. "You... you're insane. Completely mad."

"Not mad. Simply practical," said Nero.

"Do you actually _not care_ about them? Is it just that they're some strangers you barely know?"

Nero opened his mouth, ready to tell Jiod with iron certainty that _of course_ he cared, and Jiod was being ridiculous to even suggest—except he couldn't. The certainty that had kept him going year after year, century after century, driving him to strive to greater and greater lengths to make the perfect empire just _wasn't there_. Nero hadn't even bothered asking himself such a question in longer than he cared to remember, he had just assumed the answer in the back of his mind, unconsciously using it to justify himself. Internally panicking, Nero picked apart his own thoughts and emotions with the adeptness dragons were born with and examined his every action in an impartial light, digging deeply into his mind to discover not the answer, but the very reason he was _him_. Finally, he found it. And it shocked him to the core. He still didn't want to resume his original form unless he absolutely had to, such as right now, but it wasn't because he refused to associate with a species that would sacrifice millions of sentient beings for continued secrecy and call it cheap. It wasn't because he had an internal sense of justice screaming at the unfairness of the world. Nero realized that the reason was much less complicated than that; _he wanted a challenge_. Nero kept his face completely straight throughout this epiphany, and decided to give Jiod the answer that he might actually believe.

"Of course I care. But I'm more of one who drowns out my reaction to grief with action, only to acknowledge it when I know I can deal with the release," said Nero, the bald-faced lie dripping from his lips with no emotion at first, then injecting just the _lightest, barely perceptible_ quiver into the last part of his sentence. It was a sentence designed to invite sympathy, yet make it seem as if he'd reject any hint of it violently. In short—a sentence to silence the listener.

Nero's voice then became brisk, instructional. It was a tone that invited no questions, giving firmer credence to the illusion. "Now, let's get to it. First off, do you have any prior experience with blacksmithing?"

"Well... ah... I was always more of the—"

"Obviously not," Nero cut him off. "And so we begin with the basics."

Debris were cleared, logs were chopped down and brought to the forge. Scattered implements in various stages of repair were found, collected, catalogued, and cleaned. Finally, Jiod's instruction started. It became immediately apparent that Jiod was not proficient in glass-blowing, as his several first tries had garnered no more than a shattered mess of glittering shards coating the workplace. After several hours of unsuccessful attempts, Jiod's body reminded him how tired he was. He staggered away from Nero and collapsed onto the ground. Nero huffed in disgust and tapped a foot while he impatiently waited for Jiod to get up. _Just a few more hours_ , Jiod promised himself. _He'll give up by then_...

Jiod jerked awake to the sound of laughter. Leaping to his feet, he looked around and spotted... Nero, holding a long metal pole in one hand and something too small for him to catch a real look at in the other. Jiod warily edged closer to him. "Umm... you alright?"

"You see this?" Nero asked, and thrust something into Jiod's face. It looked like... a pebble, completely encased in glass.

"Um. Yes," said Jiod, now in the odd state of trying to keep his head from being accidentally bashed with a rock while attempting to remain close enough to allow reasonable conversation. "The thing is... are you even sure this will work? I mean, a magic rock sealed inside you that grants a wish when coated in glass is kinda... weird, you know?"

"No, it might not work. Or it may kill me. Who knows?" said Nero with a shrug. "Never tried it before, obviously."

"Then... how do you even know it... never mind. How confident are _you_ that it will work?" Jiod asked.

"I'd say... one in twenty? If we're lucky and the glass thing even works." Nero replied.

Jiod just looked at Nero, mouth agape. A few minutes later, he was still struggling to find words. "This... you're betting your _life_ on a one in twenty chance?" he managed to get out.

"People have bet on much worse odds, and for more than just a single life," Nero said.

"And... just to be clear... if the stupid rock doesn't glow soon enough for me to break the glass and put it back inside your _sawed open chest cavity_ you die? And I have absolutely _no_ way to know when 'soon enough' is?!" Jiod said.

"I'd say that's about the size of it, yes," Nero answered.

Jiod was reduced back to a state of complete wordlessness for several hours thereafter.

§

For a task that seemed so simple, actually doing it was _hard_. Jiod spent hours at a time trying to fix something stupid like how well he could _blow on a rock_. After three days of hard work, Jiod was sure Nero was inhuman. The man never seemed to sleep, always up when Jiod settled down and when he awoke testing this or trying that, supposedly finding new ways to somehow make the glass form in a better way, but whenever Jiod asked what _exactly_ he was doing, Nero always said they were techniques saved "for later, when you've got down the basics."

The truth was simply that glass-blowing fascinated Nero. He'd never had the time nor patience before, and while he had used his dragon fire to forge himself human gear out of metals in the past, he'd never really bothered to think of blacksmithing as anything other than a way to get things done, like he'd once considered wielding a sword just a way to kill an enemy rather than a skill with such myriad complexities it became an _art_ on the level of draconic duelling.

Finally, after six long and hard days of instruction under the strange "lenient until you get it wrong the second time" tutorship of Nero, Jiod was pronounced ready.

Nero had settled himself on the ground as comfortably as he could. "Well, go ahead. I'm not getting any older, but I'm certainly not getting any younger, either."

 _I_ really _hope he knows what he's doing_ , Jiod thought. _Oh well. Nothing to do but do it, really._ And if Nero _did_ die through no fault of Jiod's, he could consider it payment for the crime of performing piracy against Vikings. It was supposed to be the other way around, with the Vikings preying on innocent trading vessels.


	12. Chapter 12

**Interlude**

Centuries of struggle had finally spent themselves, and now I was tired... so tired. I'd seen the birth of Latican, and now I was bearing witness to its end. Escaping the once-pristine palace of marble had sapped a great deal of my strength. I limped into the nearest alley and slumped against a rough wall, ignoring the blood coating my tunic. My eyes closed for a brief moment. How had it come to this? How could everything have gone so wrong? The dragons had deserted us, the priests had all been slaughtered before they could raise the magical defences, and the armoury had been the first thing the enemy's trebuchet targeted. With the loss of the temples, it was only a matter of time before the enemy's priests raised our own magical shielding against us, trapping us inside. And I... I had lost my charge to an enemy's axe. I had drawn from my own physical reserves to obliterate everyone in the throne room in retaliation... but not even the strongest magic could undo what had been done. The shouts and metal-on-metal clanging of more traditional arms drifted over from a few streets over. It looked as if our last stand would be waged without me.

"Check every street. This demonic nest must be completely cleansed," someone said, filled with authoritative self-righteousness. "You four, take that alleyway. Everyone else, with me."

Heavy footsteps stomped, weighed down with armour made from iron. Most of them faded into the distance, but I could hear some still headed my way. I raised my eyes. These men were bearing the same armour as the ones who'd invaded the throne room, slaughtering the entire royal family, along with their children. Gritting my teeth, I raised myself up onto my feet and unsheathed my blade. The soldiers advanced confidently. One of them got close enough to slash at me. I swiftly brought my sword up to redirect his blow. He tried to punch me with his gauntleted fist, but I sidestepped and thrust my sword into an eye slit. I then braced a leg against the soldier and shoved, knocking him backward and freeing my sword. Another soldier rushed me, knocking me to the ground again. I kicked at his legs, tripping him up. He landed on the ground with a thud, momentarily stunned. His sword clattered to the ground, and I picked it up only to stab it into his back with all my strength, tearing through the armour. I left it there. The last two soldiers must have been shocked and paused long enough for me to take off running.

I ran as fast as I could toward the city border, forcing myself forwards at a pace that would have made me see red even if I'd been operating at peak efficiency, dodging around flaming debris and the rubble of abandoned homes, jumped over piles of bodies and waded through crimson rivers. I slipped through a gap in the outer wall and sprinted toward the forest. I must have had the luck of the gods on my side to make it so far without being spotted. As I reached the edge of the forest, a black shroud slowly draped itself over my eyes. I finally collapsed into unconsciousness, my body unable to take the constant abuse.

I awoke to the smell of smoke. Groaning, I lifted myself off of the ground. I cautiously limped back to the edge of the forest and into the moonlight. I looked at the city and saw chaos. Latican was now a ruined wreck. The parts of the city that hadn't collapsed into rubble were still burning brightly. I heard a loud flap from above, followed by another a few seconds later. I looked up, and could barely glimpse the form of a dragon as black as night above me. I turned my attention back to the city, ignoring it for now. With a loud thud, the dragon settled itself on the ground.

"I'm sorry, Nero, but there was nothing we could do," said the dragon, voice deep and raspy.

My jaw tightened, and I just barely stopped myself from screaming at her.

"You abandoned us. The only time we needed you... and you never came."

"There were circumstances beyond our control that prevented us from giving our aid."

"Circumstances. Hah. Well then, what were they?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"I am not able to inform you."

I finally turned around. Rena looked the same as she had the last time I'd seen her. She'd settled into a regal pose, legs folded under her and long neck stretched out, barely fitting under the canopy of trees. Her purple eyes glowed brightly but dispassionately. Incandescent rage filled me, and words flooded out of my mouth.

"Just like last time, I see. First the mere massacre of a couple hundred people, now the genocide of an entire nation," I said. My voice had risen as I'd been speaking, and by the end I was shouting.

"We can not afford to risk ourselves every time you have a problem," Rena said.

"Oh, so thousands of lives aren't worth saving?" I said, a bleary haze of red narrowing my vision, this time not from exhaustion. "You're no better than _silarions_ ," I told her, my last shred of self-restraint finally leaving me. Rena said nothing, but her eyes narrowed. It felt like a victory to have dredged up even that bit of emotion from her.

"You're no sister of mine," I said, and allowed the last of my magic to well up through my eyes. It emerged and swept my false form away. A silver mist obscured my vision, and when it faded, I emerged slightly larger than Rena in size. I clung to my resolve as every other emotion faded. I stretched my sinuous neck, and muscles strained with sudden use after so many years of dormancy. Rena's face gave away nothing, but I could now sense fear. Perhaps she thought I would attack her.

"I formally renounce my birthright," I said coldly.

"...what?" Rena said.

"What I should have last time." Without another word, I opened my jaws and struck at my chest, sending silver scales flying.

"Stop! Talk to the Elders if you are so desperate. This will achieve nothing. Nothing!"

I dug deeper into my own flesh, ignoring the pain, until I felt it; my heart stone. I quickly grasped it in my jaws, trying to shatter it before I became too weak. However, I had underestimated the extent of my atrophy, and could only crack it. To my relief, it seemed to be enough. I shrunk back into my human form, now sporting a gaping hole in my chest. I had _enough_ of dragons. A smile marked my face as I fell back into unconsciousness, the last thing I could hear a roar of grief. So she _did_ care.


	13. Chapter 13

Hiccup was having some difficulties with his new crusade. Most dragons he encountered would rather attack him then give him information (the only ones who would do anything he 'asked' were the ones who'd rallied under him to defeat the queen), and any humans he encountered were the same. Hiccup was thus in a very irritable mood after dealing with this kind of behavior for a good few weeks.

"Ah... ya, ya... we half black dragon," the southerner said.

"Really? Where?" asked Hiccup, reaching into his pack to retrieve his map.

"Here, please, stay. I get black dragon for you. You stay. Yes?" without waiting for a response, the man turned his back on Hiccup and entered a part of his shop separated from the rest by heavy sheets of linen. _Perhaps he's getting a map..._ Hiccup thought.

The butcher emerged from the back room holding a slab of... something on a platter. Whatever it was, it looked nothing like a dragon, although it certainly was quite black.

"Best black dragon meat in all seven cities," he said, "you foreigner so you get good price. I sell very expensive to all else, or they get very fat."

Hiccup looked at the dragon meat in utter revulsion, feeling extremely glad he'd had the good sense not to bring a dragon with him. Having dragon meat as a staple food for a city of this size was both disgusting and meant they were _very_ good at taking down dragons.

"No. I want to know where _living_ black dragons are."

"Ah... is no black dragon not cooked. Maybe you think of black caiman crocodile?"

Hiccup sighed, said his goodbyes, and left. The only people who seemed to know night furies even _existed_ were vikings, and even they didn't know what they looked like. He looked up towards the sky as if he might see his best friend rocketing towards him in all his dog-like enthusiasm.

"I'll find you Toothless, wherever you are," Hiccup said.

"Ey, ever gonna move, or you just planning on holding everyone up?" a guard asked, gesturing at Hiccup with his bronze spear. With a start, he realized he'd stopped in the middle of a small gate providing passage to and from the city.

"Sorry, sorry," said Hiccup, breaking into a slow jog.

The land surrounding the city was completely bare of any decent forest. The closest thing was a small oasis sunken between a bizarre formation of surrounding sand dunes composed of only four trees. It was the perfect hiding place for a dragon, so long as no one who knew where it was wanted a drink.

"I'm back. Hope you two got some hunting in, 'cause we've got a long flight ahead of us."

The deep red monstrous nightmare gave a low growl with no heat in it and seemed content to continue to lie in the sun. The nadder hatchling just gave a sad chirr. For some reason, this made him uneasy.

"What's up with you?" Hiccup said. "I can understand the nightmare, they all seem to hate everything, but we got you outta that queen's nest." The monstrous nightmare continued to ignore him, and the nadder turned to stare at him with big, sad eyes.

"Well... I guess there's no harm in a small delay," said Hiccup. He sat himself down cross-legged next to the dozing nightmare and the nadder on its back. It _was_ extremely comfortable, and Hiccup almost joined the nightmare in its nap when he felt something jump onto his chest.

"Oof! You don't just jump—" Hiccup's playful 'angry speech' was cut off when the nadder began vigorously licking his face. "Grpfh—you _know_ that doesn't wash ou—" Hiccup started to say, then stopped. The little dragon continued slobbering all over his face, oblivious to Hiccup's emotions. The nadder reminded him too much of Toothless, who was—still alive. Hiccup was completely sure of it. They'd fallen, but Toothless had probably escaped to swim to some distant land. Any memory Hiccup had that said otherwise was ruthlessly consigned to the 'nightmare or hallucination' section of his brain. And Hiccup wouldn't do anything so foolish as _cry_ just because something reminded him of his _definitely still alive_ best friend.

"Right, time to go," Hiccup stood, gently pushing the nadder off of him. "C'mon you big lump, get up. We've got places to go, dragons to find." After much shoving, cursing, and cajoling on Hiccup's part, the nightmare finally got itself up onto its haunches with an ear ringer of a cross between a yawn and a roar. _Must have been more dragon spit on me than I realized,_ Hiccup thought as he wiped liquid trails from his face.

* * *

"So... you're a dragon," said Jiod.

The dragon didn't deign to answer, instead staring down at him rather condescendingly. A fifty-foot length and further eighty-foot wingspan tended to allow it to pull the look off pretty well, considering how difficult it should be for a dragon with physical features quite incompatible to a human to do with any success.

"You have a hole in your chest," Jiod said.

The dragon regarded him steadily. Clouds waltzed across the sky, wind blew dust into the air, and the world moved out without caring if someone really, really thought it would be an appropriate time to just _stop_.

"Are... are you gonna say anything, or..."

"Look, can we just skip this whole thing? Yes, I'm a dragon. So what? Move on," said the dragon.

"Um. So. You _are_ Nero, right?"

The dragon gave Jiod a flat look.

"Yeah, uh, right. Just checking, you know. I'm just gonna... uh... bye," Jiod said, and promptly took off running. Just because he'd found a cute pet dragon that one time didn't mean he'd forgotten what the rest of them were capable of. In fact, Jiod suspected that Nero would be a particularly vengeful dragon, what with the whole 'sealed in human form' thing. _What did I just do..._ Jiod thought with the calm detachment that is the sole domain of people who don't have anything to lose, are about to die, or can't process what just happened. And so it was that he didn't even scream when he suddenly found himself rising into the air caged in the grip of two large silver paws.

"You're an idiot," the dragon informed him.

"And hello to you too," Jiod said. "So what're you gonna do with me?"

"Depends. If I let you down, will you just... _not_ be stupid?" Nero said.

"Sure," said Jiod, "but I have my own definition of stupid."

Nero set down in the charred ruins of what had probably been a viking's house on his hind legs, shifting the remaining logs and debris significantly, and let Jiod go—from around twelve feet up.

"OW! That _hurt_ damnit!" Jiod said, rubbing an ankle.

"Vikings are pretty much all made of rubber anyways. I could dangle one of you on a string and bounce you all over the island headfirst and you'd be fine," Nero said, his 'voice' somehow managing to seem amused.

"You know what— _ohmygodswhatisthat!_ " Jiod said, pointing at an area under the building Nero had landed on.

"Let's see," Nero said, and flipped a large chunk of stone away, revealing a sight that made even him turn his head away. In the ruins of the structure lie a human corpse, liberally soaked in red. There was no way to determine its gender, as it was missing a head as well as an arm and the bottom half of its body, from which entrails long gone grey snaked out. The whole thing was crawling with maggots and other critters, all in a frenzy trying to get as much as they could of this unexpected feast before it was taken by the others. Already clear white bone was showing in places, devoid of the barest scrap of flesh or tiniest dot of blood.

Jiod shuddered visibly. "This place is a graveyard. Let's... let's get out of here." It was a testament to the strength of a viking's stomach that he didn't lose the few scavenged nuts he'd found as a meal.

"Agreed," Nero said. He was suddenly reminded of just what had ocurred on this island, along with countless others that had fallen to silarions.

* * *

 **New chapter's up! Review... or else! I really don't know how the plot got here, it just kind of... wrote itself. Thought I'd best include _something_ to get people to grasp the magnitude of what exactly happened to Berk.**


	14. Chapter 14

The sea was completely calm, an endless expanse stretching out before Jiod in every direction.

"Maybe we're in the wrong place," Jiod said.

Nero moved his immense head in a full circle before replying. "Nope." He threw himself forward into the wind again, wings flapping mightily.

"So we're just gonna leave? No exploring or anything?" Jiod asked, by now knowing better than to expect a reply for what Nero deemed 'stupidly obvious questions'. "Right, well, if you'd let me _see_ rather than trapping me in your fat and very non see-through claws—"

"You are _not_ riding on my back," said Nero. "For one thing, you'd fall off. For another, I _ate_ the last human who tried."

Silence fell while Jiod digested this. "Alright," he said, deciding he'd rather not know the details, "so where we going, anyways?"

" _You_ ," said Nero, blowing a thin stream of smoke from a nostril into Jiod's face, "I'm putting down on the next island I see. What _I_ do is none of your business."

"What? No!" Jiod struggled against Nero's grip. "That would be a death sentence! If you put me down on any other island other than my tribe's I'll have nothing to get off of it with, and I have no money or supplies on me to pay for safe passage anywhere."

"Then I'll—"

"And I can't go back to my tribe," he said, forestalling the obvious response.

"Why—"

"I can't, ok?"

"An outcast, are we," Nero said. It wasn't a question.

"It wasn't my fault, ok? I don't even know why they did it," Jiod said.

"I never said it was... I'm a bit of an outcast as well, to tell the truth."

An island appeared in Jiod's claw-obstructed view. It looked uninhabited by humans, but then any island did, if landfall was made at the right (or wrong) place.

"Are... are you letting me off there?" Jiod said.

"Depends," Nero replied. "Where do you want me to drop you off?"

"There's... well, I just don't have anywhere to go anymore."

"Then it looks like you're stuck with me for a while." said Nero

§

Jiod squinted at the ground. It _could_ be a dragon paw print, but it may as well be from a lion or something for all he knew. Jiod poked around in the shrubs near the tracks, looking to see if there was a scale or two. Nero had told him it was the season when most silarions started shedding. No scales. Why he was looking for 'silarions', Jiod had no idea. Nero never explained much. Jiod thought about sitting down next to Nero and not moving until he got answers... but Nero would probably just fly away, without him this time. The shrub he was about to start rooting through rustled violently, and an orange... something came out and was hissing at Jiod's eye level atop a nearby branch before he could blink. Jiod caught a good look at it, a small dragon (or silarion, according to Nero) looking as if it had been formed from nightmares, and about the size of a housecat with orange scales of the type he'd never seen before. Each scale was at a slightly different elevation, which made it look like it was made of some sort of rock, or had a fatal disease. The dragon didn't seem to possess nostrils or ears, but had wide, gaping jaws below its eye slits. Then it was gone again.

§

"I've never heard of a silarion like that before," Nero said, idly scratching something in the dirt with a claw.

"Yeah... me neither. So, what do we do now?" Jiod said.

Nero stood up, stretched all four legs, and strode toward Jiod.

"No, no, not... ugh! Can I at least make an armband or something to sit on?"

"Clever, but no," Nero said, and in a few flaps they were above the island, shooting off to... somewhere.

Jiod endured the flight, passing the time listening to Nero's wingbeats, which became slower and shakier as time went off. Far in the outer edges of Jiod's sight range, he thought he could glimpse another island... but as they got closer, it was revealed to be the largest shoreline he'd ever seen.

"Is... is this the mainland?" Jiod asked. Nero gave a grunt in response. Jiod decided to take it as a yes.

Time passed as Jiod sat encased in Nero's claws, glimpsing the land below flash by at an incredible pace. He tried and failed to make out any details, only getting a general sense of brown patch, green patch, yellow patch, green patch again... An indeterminable time later, Nero slowed without warning. His wings trembled with the effort of just holding them up by then. He hovered for a few brief wingbeats, allowing Jiod to get a detailed view of this new area. They appeared to be flying over a verdant valley completely ringed by a mountain range in such a perfect circle it looked planned. On the valley's floor lie a castle, a stream incorporated into it as a moat. Said castle was constructed of some kind of beige stone for the walls and keep in the center. Cannons dotted the ramparts. Something about it struck Jiod as odd.

"Wait... why are we going to a castle? You know you'll be shot, right? Even an arrow can get you, you've got a huge target on your chest now," Jiod said, not wanting to plummet to his death.

"This is a safe zone," said Nero. "We'll be fine."

Jiod looked more closely. Something felt very off about it. It had walls, there was an inner keep, there looked to be a small village outside of it... It didn't occur to Jiod until they were over the walls and no one had shot them that there were no people. Not one. Nero landed in a large courtyard in the middle of the inner keep.

"So... you gonna turn human now or something," Jiod asked.

"Can't," Nero said. "Gotta wait 'til this heals." He pointed at his chest with a claw.

"Ah... right."

The courtyard had a fountain in the middle, completely dried up and with small cracks spidering over it. Patterns of painted cobblestones formed a floor, chipped in some places, worn grey in others. Long creeping vines had long since conquered the surrounding walls, and glassless windows sported their own varieties of vegetation. A porch protruded from a wall, supported by two marble columns whose inscriptions had faded with time. Under the overhang loomed an ominously large wooden slab of a door, which gave off the impression of great strength even with its apparent age.

The door gave a cough, dust was startled off the hinges, and it began to open...

* * *

 **Experimenting with different things. I hope the imagery's better here. Also, I feel like there's something wrong with the way I write dialogue, can anyone help with that? Formatting wise, I mean.**


	15. Chapter 15

The strangest thing Jiod had ever seen _rolled_ from the doorway. The bottom of it caught his attention first. It had eight long and thin legs that looked as if they'd been modeled off a spider. At the bottom of each leg were two small wheels that made quiet whirring sounds as they spun. Jiod dragged his gaze away from the legs with considerable effort. The torso of the creature was a long column that was bent backwards at the base, then curved forwards at the midpoint like an S. Two human like arms extended from it, seemingly bendable at any point. Jiod took a moment to think about how weak those arms likely were before the head distracted him. Mounted atop the torso an oblong head with a black strip across where eyes might have been swerved back and forwards slightly, like a snake. It had a general color of bleached out white, with some faded blue stripes wandering aimlessly and haphazardly on its body. The aberration stopped before the human and dragon, and the little wheels on each leg retracted upwards, allowing it to perform what may, if you were generous, be described as a bow.

"Welcome unidentified third generation. Welcome unidentified guest." The creature's 'speech' was the freakiest part of it, Jiod immediately decided. The thing didn't seem to have anything which could be called a mouth, and the noise that came from it most resembled words somehow extracted from various conversations at completely different points in time, making a cacophony of words at impossibly different pitches, lengths, and tone. Jiod thought that if he had to listen to the thing too much, he might go mad.

"Jiod, it would be best if you'd stay here for a moment, I need to give the guardian some information. I assume it'll be alright if we talked security in the foyer?" said Nero, looking at the guardian. Jiod was too mesmerized by the thing to respond just then. His mouth didn't quite hang open, but it was close. In the back of his mind, he wondered at its name. Guardian? A good solid hit with an axe would probably split what it had for a skull, and those arms looked too weak to do any damage. Before he knew it, Nero had gone inside with the guardian before Jiod could recover from just _looking_ at the thing. He heaved an irritable sigh, and added it to his ever-growing list of 'stuff Nero wasn't telling him that he _would_ find out about'.

Regardless of the courtyard's degradation, it was still quite peaceful and easy to relax in. The clumps of vegetation that were soft and thick enough to lie down in, the soft, warm rays of morning, the feeling of being left on his own, yet watched over by some benevolent presence all combined into a heady feeling of well-being, and before he knew it Jiod was struggling not to drift off to sleep.

It came to an end later. Jiod could not say how much later, for time seemed to have gone both too fast and too slowly. He'd been wanting Nero and the guardian thing to finish up so he could ask him questions... questions that seemed to fade in importance when he was feeling so comfortable, and did Nero _have_ to roll him over with his claw like he was a bug? A pleasant buzz worked its way through Jiod's ears and into his being, and he decided that no, whatever other thing he'd been wanting to do was not important, not at all, and _would Nero stop disturbing him_? Something penetrated the buzz, slid into Jiod's brain, and nagged at him until he paid attention to it. _Fine... what is..._

"—place has been _warded_ since the last time I've been here, figures, the one time they do something smart it completely messes with me. Is there at least an emergency stash? No, don't respond, if there is get it as fast as possible, can't have him killing himself—" Harsh, violently clashing noises that Jiod realized were from the guardian reached him, and he was too _tired_ to bother interpreting it, no matter how much the whatever it was nagged him. In fact, that dragon was pretty boring anyways, why listen to it ramble on when he could just lie there... but as soon as Jiod stopped paying attention to it, the nagging feeling ramped up to an unbearably annoying level. Ok, he'd listen again, but then he deserved a long, long time to just... _rest_.

"—honestly, they can't even get this right, no safe words, no countermeasures but to cancel the entire ward, what were they _thinking_ the idiots—" There, that was enough. More than enough. It was time to let himself have some long awaited nap, without being _bothered_ all the time. Suddenly, to his horror, the pleasant feelings started to drain away, leaving him empty, and... confused. Why on earth would he ever pick a _nap_ , of all things, to get in the way of _answers_? Jiod opened his eyes, having closed them for some reason earlier, and saw a huge scimitar on his chest... no wait, it was just a claw... _just_ a claw? Oh, it was Nero... wait, why did Nero have a claw on his chest? Jiod's thoughts spun in circles. His brain decided it was too much stimulus all at once, and firmly insisted on shutting down until he could comprehend such complex thoughts as _which way is up_?

The first thing Jiod was aware of were his toes. He tried to wiggle them. No wait, that wasn't right... he had other things too. Like... legs. And legs needed to move first. With that realization, Jiod was able to wiggle them. A chuckle burbled up his mouth. Oh, that was right. He also had one of those. Would wonders never cease?

"Looks like you survived. I've never seen anyone I brought here get as close to dying as you. Congratulations," said a deep voice from above his mouth. Oh yeah, his mouth was just a piece, it was on a _head_. _Incredible_.

"Yay... where are we," Jiod managed to say.

"Open your eyes," said the voice. He did. And gasped. The courtyard had a look of dignified age about it, a hidden strength that would never fail no matter what it weathered. This room was not like that. It was completely spotless, and the ceiling sloped into an upside down bowl—a dome—with detailed pictures of interweaving dragons sprawled on an otherwise deserted moor, all spewing fire the color of their scales. Everything was drawn in the bright colors of sunlight, despite the moon being clearly visible at the very top most point of the dome. And if he tilted his head, Jiod could see rich tapestries adorned with more dragon designs, and if he stretched just slightly further, turning his head sideways to see the floor next to the bed he was lying on, he could see no floor, only a large silver dragon curled around the bed, countless jewels and golden... things (the sheer amount of _stuff_ made out of gold made it impossible to refer to it collectively as anything other than _things)_ , along with what looked like priceless artifacts scattered about.

"What happened?" Jiod asked.

Nero's huge angular head somehow gave off a concerned look. "I think... I think I'll tell you," he said. "And then we'll decide whether or not to let you keep the memories."

"Ah," said Jiod. "Wait, _what_?"

* * *

 **Here be chapters. Hope someone likes. Or reviews. Especially reviews.**


	16. Chapter 16

"Hey, I've been alive thousands of years, you'd be dead of old age before I could tell you a tiny fraction of what I know," said Nero, content to answer questions lying on top of the ridiculous amount of wealth piled in the room.

"Yeah, but asking questions? I'm a viking, you know. We don't tend to think up the best questions," said Jiod, ignoring the headache that had suddenly blossomed into existence, along with a deep desire for sleep.

"Ask away. I'll wait. I might fall asleep if you take too long, though," said Nero, an amused tone colouring his words.

Jiod struggled for a question, any question. It couldn't be _that_ hard. After all, he'd been bursting with them just... well, just before he'd fallen unconscious... "Where are we, and how did I get here?"

A deep, raspy rumble filled the air. It paused for a second, then returned with a higher pitch. Then it started over again... and again... and Jiod realized that the dragon was _snoring_. "You—"

The dragon's snoring broke off, it raised its head, and gave off a series of short barks that Jiod took as laughter.

"Just having a bit of fun, little viking," said Nero, and then, voice darkening, "you're here because someone was foolish enough to add a ward to the courtyard that kills any sentient being that is not a dragon, as if the external wards wouldn't be enough. But that's not the foolish part. The foolish part was not having a warning, and having no way to cancel it besides destroying the entire ward."

Jiod stared blankly at the domed ceiling, and watched ranks of dragons curling around each other, lighting up the night with dragon fire. Then, "What's a ward?"

Nero gave a sound that no human would have been able to translate as the groan it was. "It's a broad term for a magical defence. Basically, any static point imbued with magic that is harmful is some way and degrades incredibly slowly."

Jiod decided he'd had enough of the ceiling, interesting though it was, and rolled onto his side. The hoard of treasure was mesmerizing in its own right. Jiod decided to look at it. "Ok, so, I don't understand. Can a human learn magic?" he asked.

"No," said Nero.

"Right, then, on second thought, who cares what a ward is. Umm... why do you hate dra—silarions so much? We kill them 'cause they attack us and steal supplies, but you look like you could be a certain type of, um, silarion," said Jiod, hoping to get a response that made sense.

Cold, clipped words, like splinters of ice, entered Jiod's ears. "They're mindless lizards that their queen forces to destroy what it can't control. Most can't do magic, but their claws are sharp, and can get through the scales of a young dragon. They're a plague that kills anything in its path, and must be eradicated," said Nero. His former comfortable sprawl was gone, and he was now coiled in a tight knot, muscles in his neck showing. Metallic looking sheets extended from the sides of his eyes, covering all but the black pupil, and more extended from the sides of his head.

"So... they attacked you," said Jiod.

Nero gave a dragon sigh, which was incomprehensible to Jiod. "At first, we thought they might be peaceful. They didn't respond to attempts at communication though, and one day a huge flock of them found one of our nests. It had been a hard winter, and the minders were all out hunting. They found it almost undefended, except for one adult dragon and a few young ones, barely a few centuries out of the shell. It was a slaughter. The old one was slain first by a carpet of little horrors, one of which got lucky and drove a talon into her eye slit. By then, her wings had been obliterated, so when she was pushed out of the nest, she had no chance. One by one, the rest fell, except for a single young dragon who hid by the wall, under the fresh corpses of two other fallen defenders, not even incinerated as was their right. The single survivor stayed in that position for days, watching helplessly as silarions carted dragon eggs into the main cavern... and the queen twisted the unborn hatchlings in body and mind, but not so much that they would entirely lose their capacity for magic. The survivor escaped before they hatched, and didn't learn about what happened to the eggs until much later. But that was when we knew that they were our enemy," Nero finished.

Jiod spent some time digesting this. "Is the survivor still around?" he asked.

"Yes," said Nero. He hadn't relaxed. In fact, he looked to have been getting steadily _more_ rigid, if it was possible.

Before Jiod could think of another question, the door opened. The door was plain and rather hard to notice, but what entered was not.

"What _is_ the guardian?" Jiod asked, appalled that such a creature could even exist.

The guardian retracted its wheels and... scuttled across the hoard to Nero. "We are under siege. All able guests are to provide magical strength for the defences." The things speech hadn't become any easier to bear. Jiod had to think about what it had said for a few seconds before understanding reached him. And then...

"Siege? What siege? Where? How?" he said.

Nero didn't say anything, remaining in his same curled up position. The guardian left the room. "What?" he finally said.

§

Jiod stood in the highest tower there was, right in the middle of the keep, and stared at the army. It wasn't silarions, like Nero had expected, or a false alarm, like Jiod had suspected. It was humans. How they had bypassed the ring of mountains, no one could guess. The valley was very large, large enough for what must have been at least a thousand armed and armored troops to stand at a considerable distance from the castle. Behind the troops were large catapults. They had not yet fired, but the havoc they could cause was considerable.

"Is there any reason for an army to attack this place?" Jiod said to apparently empty space.

"Not that I know of," said Nero, curled around the top of the tower.

A roar went up amongst the army. The catapults were loaded, stones were flung at the castle. Right before hitting the walls, each stone suddenly crumbled and spewed shards in every direction but the castle. Blue waves of light rippled from the initial impacts.

"So... we staying, or leaving?" Jiod asked.

* * *

 **I'm sorry, I couldn't help it! The plot mutated, grew arms, and held me hostage at gunpoint!**


	17. Chapter 17

Jiod had lots of practice fighting against dragons, or silarions as they must be called unless he wanted Nero to roast him and do something vile with his corpse. In fact, he was considered an elite dragon fighter among his tribe, who rarely fought dragons. Even though he was considered merely average on islands like Berk, he was hopeful this would give him an advantage.

"Fighting humans is nothing like fighting humans," said Nero.

Well, there went that hope. Nero seemed to notice Jiod's expression.

"Don't worry, if they breach the outer defences they'll swarm you. You won't last long no matter how skilled you are unless that happens," said Nero, demonstrating a significant lack of tact.

Jiod didn't acknowledge that comment, instead looking at the advancing army. They looked like a living carpet, slowly crawling forwards. The catapults flung large rocks every few seconds, causing Jiod to flinch with every impact on the wards. Nero had ignored them, reached in the tower, and extracted Jiod before he could protest. They had then flown towards the outer wall, which Nero dropped him on without any attempt to be gentle.

"Should I use that?" Jiod said, pointing at one of the many cannons lining the top of the walls. Nero raised his head up above the ramparts where Jiod stood, the rest of him clinging to the wall, and looked at where Jiod was pointing.

"Probably not," Nero said, "those things have been there for centuries. No telling what they'd do if someone tried to use them now."

"So... they're weapons, right?" Jiod asked.

"Yes—"

"Why shouldn't I be _helping_ them? What's so good about this place? For all I know, dragons are as much of a problem here as they, um, silarions, are for vikings," said Jiod.

Nero was silent for a time. Rocks impacted on wards, soldiers marched onwards, and the air around the castle grew visibly greener. It slowly brightened until thing strands of something were visible even in the light of the sun.

"That's right," Nero said at last,"you were acting like you were fine with everything before, even with me being a dragon and carrying you all the way out here. I forgot you don't know anything." His voice was soft, with no trace of condescension.

His answer took Jiod by surprise. He hadn't thought the dragon would be _reasonable_ , and act as if there was no doubt that Jiod would choose to fight. "I... I was surprised before, is all—"

"Ah, that's right, you were an outcast. Well outcast, think of your tribe's worst enemy, the enemy that wouldn't hesitate to slaughter a child in a village under attack by silarions just to come out ahead. I assume you have a tribe like that, most civilizations do. Now, imagine that tribe found secrets of war that made them undefeatable, and swept across all the others, killing those who showed the slightest hints of resistance, and enslaving everyone else. That is what we are facing."

This speech set off an argument inside Jiod's brain. _He could be lying_ , said one part. _Why would he lie_? asked another. _To get an ally, stupid_ , the first part responded. _Pretty useless ally then. He_ _so_ _said himself_ _that—_

Nero interrupted Jiod's pondering with a quick "Got to go do dragon stuff. Dropping rocks, breathing fire, paralyzing hearts with fear and/or magic, the works. Have fun up here. If they get any ladders up, be so kind as to push them off, would you? Thanks, bye." The dragon proceeded to rise up into the air and dive towards the army, only to veer off when a volley of arrows rose to meet him. Nero retreated for a bit only to come back grasping a large boulder to his chest and spewing waves of fire, cooking ranks of soldiers inside their armor. Jiod looked on in awe. Silarions had a certain amount of fire they could use, and could only make it go any distance by projecting it in 'shots'. If Nero was let loose in a viking village, it'd stand no chance. With that thought, Jiod's mind flashed back to that cursed island of Berk, surrounded in constant fog, grey and drained of color, the village shattered and broken, the inhabitants killed or eaten—and the enormous queen presiding over them all before she was destroyed by her own minions.

Jiod was yanked to the present when three enormous rocks smacked into the wards nearly simultaneously. A high screeching sound rose in pitch over a second, the sound of steel on steel magnified by an order of magnitude, and was abruptly replaced by a more... grindy version of the sound of broken glass. A shower of dust coated Jiod, causing him to go into a brief coughing fit. _They broke through_ , he thought with an odd calm. He could do this, it was easy. Push down some ladders, he'd had harder jobs when fighting silarions.

The wave of soldiers reached the walls. Ladders were distributed over a small area and carefully positioned so the hooks would catch in just the right places. A ladder tilted sideways and fell among the sea of people, but they were already climbing the others. Jiod ran flat out along the wall and flung away six ladders in total before the first helmet poked above the battlements. A soldier flung himself onto the wall right in front of Jiod with an expertly executed roll. He sprung to the balls of his feet, swaying slightly in readiness. The soldier had the insignia of a black sun extending withered rays, looking as if they were grasping for something, painted on his breastplate. A short, thin blade was held in one hand, a dagger in the other. Jiod rushed him, swinging his axe with a battle cry. He put all his strength into the heaviest blow he could manage, one that would cleave straight through a monstrous nightmare's scales.

And the soldier blocked. His hands had been down by his sides, grasping his weapons loosely, and now they were in front of his, dagger crossed behind the sword, forming a cross that held Jiod's mightiest blow at bay. Jiod flung himself backward and _ran_. He wasn't running _away_ , he told himself, he was only trying to remove as many ladders as he could before reinforcements came. He chanced a glance behind him. The soldier hadn't moved, and seemed content to wait where he was— _by the ladder_ —Jiod realized. He turned back, but by then the soldier had been joined by three others, though none of them had the black sun on their armor. The new soldiers all had standard longswords and small kite shields, which must have been the reason for their slower ascent

Jiod spun around yet again. He might believe Nero about them, but that didn't mean he was ready to go to Valhalla just yet. Before he could get to far, his path was blocked again. This soldier had a longsword as well, and swung it at Jiod. It was a lot slower than a nadder's spines, and he easily dodged and brought his axe around. The soldier was off balance, and stumbled when Jiod kicked at the back of his knee. Before he could recover, an axe had separated his head from the body with such force that the head spun off the wall and into the massed army below. The headless body continued to spurt blood in copious amounts, soaking Jiod's boots within seconds. He gingerly stepped above the body. Jiod was no stranger to killing, but he'd rarely had to kill other humans before.

More were rushing at Jiod from both directions. Jiod raised his axe in the air, roared his loudest battle cry, and charged. A haze descended over his vision as Jiod's axe whirled at speeds that he would find impossible to replicate outside of combat, splitting breastplates, removing limbs, and severing heads. A new wave rushed him, and this time he saw the soldier with the small blades and black sun, now without a helmet. In Jiod's current state, reading expressions was a skill beyond him, yet he still got a vague feeling of unease from the man's face. Whatever, he was ready for them. He laughed, voice strange and tinny in his ears, and waited for them to come—and he was snatched into the air and held in claws of steel.

A strange cross between Norse and incoherent shouting tore out of Jiod's throat, sounding vaguely like "Let, go! Put, down! I fight! Down now!"

"The castle is lost. We must survive to fight another day," said Nero. "Although I must say you came around quickly."

"Berserker, idiot dragon," Jiod said, having calmed down enough to speak somewhat coherently, though not enough to stop shouting.

Nero gave the all too familiar scene of the burning, broken castle a regretful glance, then just concentrated on flying.

* * *

 **I see you, hiding in the shadows. I can tell you are reading. I feel happy about that. Let me know how you feel about this story, I might even put stuff from reviews into the actual story. The plot ran away and got eaten by a wild Toothless, so who knows. Whoops, touched a nerve? Sorry, but killing Toothless was essential to what little plot I have planned out. :P**

 **GUEST2: Thanks for reviewing mate! Glad you liked it.**


	18. Chapter 18

The stupid dragon was trying to talk to him again. The understanding that it could usually trigger in Hiccup's brain failed to cause any comprehension, sliding right off him as if he were a pane of glass.

 _No. No, no no no. Toothless, I'm so sorry, Toothless, why..._

§

It had taken Hiccup three days on dragonback to locate villagers who knew of a black dragon, and two more to find its lair.

The dragon was reputedly living inside a volcano, which Hiccup supposed made sense, because... grief rose up in his chest, and a hard lump rose in his throat. Swallowing didn't help. Hiccup pushed the emotion away. He couldn't just lie down and weep, or wallow in misery over the lives he could have saved, not when there was still a life that _could_ be saved, probably lost, confused, and maybe hurt. So he pushed his grief, his despair, his desperate loneliness, pushed them away, and welcomed the hollow emptiness that was left, along with a spark of hope.

The volcano wasn't easy to miss, the faint mist of steam rising from it even less so. Hiccup hesitated. He had not yet questioned his new ability to understand and make himself understood to dragons other than Toothless, they had all been tricks before... and he quenched the thought yet again before it could form, because then he would have to think about where the ability _came_ from. But even with his new understanding, he would still be roasted alive from the heat of a volcano. He couldn't just send the monstrous nightmare in, it wasn't exactly the brightest and would probably get into a fight with the night fury. He wouldn't risk sending the tiny nadder in, as he wasn't sure whether its flight or even fire resistance would even work at such a young age.

And so the monstrous nightmare hovered above the volcano as Hiccup deliberated, and the nadder climbed around and tried playing poke-the-dragon's-eye. The nightmare put an abrupt stop to that by tilting his head just enough to send the nadder sliding towards the volcano and just as suddenly tilting it the other way, giving the nadder the briefest opportunity to scramble back onto sturdier dragon and resolve to never do that ever again.

Hiccup heaved a sigh, raising his head from what he liked to call his 'thinking pose', and made his decision. It wasn't the worst course of action, but it wasn't the best. They would simply have to stay right next to the volcano until the dragon came out of its lair, or came back to it.

§

Hiccup and the dragons were lounging next to the lightly steaming volcano, which, oddly enough, didn't feel that hot to Hiccup, which he attributed to his new proximity to dragon fire. The nightmare, which had been curled around the volcano's rim, suddenly stiffened out, stood up, and began growling softly. Hiccup stood up as well, and placed a calming hand on its nose. "It's alright, just another dragon. I'll do the, uh, talking," he said. Hiccup watched the volcano for any sign of a dragon trying to leave unnoticed. The steam seemed to get thicker the more he watched. Light reflected off something inside the now impenetrable column of steam... Hiccup whirled around to face the nightmare. He tried to remember what he'd done when they'd fought the Red Death... he'd stomped for attention, and then... Hiccup stomped his foot, and felt silly after doing so. The nightmare completely ignored him. He'd been able to communicate them before without any trouble, he thought, so why now?

"Come on you stupid lizard, get the other lizard before it leaves!" Hiccup shouted. He stomped again, this time in anger, wanting it to _listen_ to him. The dragon looked at him. Hiccup groaned and brought a hand to his face. The dragon looked some more. Hiccup frantically spun around again, and caught a glimpse of something, still in the middle of the jet of steam. He didn't even try to use words this time, just pointed at it and _roared_ at the nightmare. It was off in a flash, springing toward the billowing cloud of steam... which disappeared. It didn't disperse, it didn't suddenly stop coming from the volcano, it disappeared as if it were never there in the first place, revealing a black dragon about the size of the nightmare that was charging straight towards it, only it looked like it had thicker scales, and seemed built more... stockily. It looked heavier, more compact than any other dragon Hiccup had ever seen, and that included Toothless.

The monstrous nightmare continued its charge. The black dragon reared up on its haunches. The nightmare seemed to cross some imperceptible border, and the black dragon brought up its forelegs fast as thought. No one watching would even know that it moved, would only see a moment where the nightmare fast approached an upright black dragon, and another moment where the nightmare lay pinned to the ground, crushed beneath the black dragon. The nightmare gave a whine and struggled futilely, but the other dragon ignored it.

"No!" Hiccup shouted, starting towards them. The nadder gave an indignant squawk beside him, extending ridiculously flimsy wings to make itself look bigger.

The black dragon seemed to hesitate, then breathed a black mist into the nightmare's face, and the nightmare was still. Hiccup's eyes widened in horror, and he rushed forward, only to stumble on a jagged rock and tumble onto the luckily level ground, reminding him of the steep drops to either side, and that he was now without the nightmare if he fell. But all other thoughts raced from his mind like mice before a particularly hungry cat when the black dragon stepped away from the downed nightmare, narrowed its eyes to horizontal slits, and hissed at him, and he _understood what it said_. He didn't hear the dragon speak, its jaws remained shut aside from a slight gap from which it still hissed, yet it spoke. "So this is what the world has come to, is it? Humans allying with silarions to finish off any other intelligence which would defy you?"

Hiccup could not reply. His mouth simply would not form words, no matter how he moved his jaw. The nadder gave a furious squawk. It said something, Hiccup thought, that a baby dragon would still argue when he, Hiccup the useless, would not. Again he pushed away his feelings, he couldn't afford to be distracted, no, not when this dragon, despite not being a night fury, could _talk_ and might know where Toothless was... _it might know where Toothless was._ And suddenly, Hiccup could speak. "I only wanted to talk, I just need... I'll do anything, if you can, help, anything."

The dragon had no expression a human would recognize, but Hiccup was unusually gifted in the area of understanding, with regards to anything not of his own species. He looked at the dragon, and the dragon looked taken aback. Then all expression was wiped from the dragon's face, and it said, "I may consider something, if you tell me why there is are silarions with you."

Hiccup thought. He didn't know what a silarion was, but it sounded bad. Maybe these black dragons hated monstrous nightmares and deadly nadders for some reason. He tried to come up with some sort of explanation, and on failing to, decided to tell the truth. "Well... dragons like them have been attacking us for hundreds of years, and, well, one day, I... I shot... I found one, a night fury. We became... we became friends, and his name is Toothless. And then, then he was found by the village, and led them to the nest, and, and, and I followed with friends and we found our village fighting a huge dragon, the Red Death. It... killed everyone, and followed us back to the island... _why, why did I lead it back, why_ and destroyed it. We crashed, and when I woke up Toothless was... was gone, but I could understand them, I told them we could defeat the Red Death," said Hiccup, deciding not to say what he'd really told the dragons, "and... they did it. Then they listened to me, and killed her, and I told the nightmare to stay with me, and I will find Toothless," Hiccup said, and heaved a huge breath.

The black dragon looked thoughtful. "This... Toothless, could he understand you, when you talked to him?"

"Of course," Hiccup said, confused. Why would a dragon need to ask that, especially one that could talk?

Two columns of smoke jetted from its nostrils as it said, "That dragon, that Toothless, was hatched from a true dragon egg, his body and mind corrupted while he grew, so that when he hatched he resembled a silarion. Some of them serve queens, others plot against them, and still others seek peace and refuge." The dragon leaned forward as she spoke, searingly bright violet eyes staring at Hiccup all the while. "You must abandon your search for him, if he has abandoned you, else you would cause him considerable pain. As for dragons like this," and here she placed a claw on the nightmare, "they only follow you because you promised them something, something they want more than anything else. These silarions must not be allowed to live, lest they fall under the control of another queen to be used as weapons against the rest of the world."

"No. No, you, you're wrong. You're _wrong_!" Hiccup said. "Let, let the nightmare go, and we'll never bother you again."

The black dragon kept her gaze steady as she answered, "You will be searching your whole life for him. If he does not wish to be found, he will not be."

"He will. He would never abandon me like that," said Hiccup, wishing he could be as confident about it as he sounded. If Toothless was gone... then... then... he couldn't imagine. He really couldn't. There was an empty void in his mind that wiped away anything else whenever he tried.

Her voice was sad, now. That emotion translated itself perfectly to human understanding. "Then I must tell you. Know that I was only trying to spare you the pain." The sincerity alarmed Hiccup, and he wasn't sure he really wanted to know what she'd say.

"Those corrupted by silarion queens still retain their innate ability to perform magic. However, the corruption prevents them from forming the necessary parts for taking catalysts such as gold and gems and using them to spark the magic. They could still perform magic, but to spark it into action, they have to use the only catalyst that remains to them—their own bodies. The ability to understand can be given through magic. I suspect more was given to you, as much as he could. Do you understand?" said the dragon, her 'voice' coming across as quiet and subdued.

No, Hiccup did _not_ understand. His understanding had formed because of their bond, not magic, Toothless was just lost, after all his tail wound had reopened, he'd probably swam to another island, and then when he'd gathered enough strength he would have gone farther still... and yet he knew in his core that Toothless would not do that. Toothless might perform a strategic retreat, but he'd never run away, not from Hiccup, he'd just come back...

"No! That's not what happened, he's fine, he's, he's out there, I'll find him," and as Hiccup yelled and sobbed and screamed, no longer able to hold his emotions at bay, the black dragon looked at him with, if tears were not blurring his eyes for the first time in many, many years, he might know as pity.

§

Something inside Hiccup had snapped, that day above the dragon's lair. Something irreplaceably precious, something that could never be fixed by any means left on Midgard. The black dragon had swiftly, without mercy, snapped the nightmare's neck. Hiccup had frozen in the middle of his fit with horror, which was instantly compounded as the dragon stepped forward once more, reaching, reaching for—and Hiccup had realized too late what the dragon had been after, as the nadder was taken from his side. Hiccup had run forward, intent on doing whatever it took to save it, but he was too slow, he was only human, and the nadder hatchling known to another as Holly had taken a claw through the skull before he could stop it. He had left silently then, and not realized until later that no emotion returned to trouble him. Perhaps it knew it would simply be left scratching at Hiccup's brain like an abandoned puppy. And still, no emotion had come... none, save the one which had never left, which had always been there, buried, suppressed with no chance of being freed... until then. And with nothing to stop it, it grew unchecked, raging out of control until all that remained in Hiccup was a cold hate that would have extinguished the sun, and frozen what remained if they had ever come into contact. One motive was left to Hiccup, to make that dragon, no, it did not deserve to be called a dragon, that _thing_ as miserable as he could... and he had time... and he had plenty of other dragons, which would help him whether they liked it or not.

* * *

 **Here's some plot. Stir it in a pot. I've force fed it to you, now tell me if you like it... or don't and be force fed the next plot as well.**

 **Can I get a review? Pleaaaase? I won't stop updating if I don't, but I might update... less. :P**


	19. Chapter 19

"So, gonna tell me where we're going now?" Jiod asked, not really expecting an answer. For some time, he didn't get one. Then...

"Yes," Nero said.

"Wait, what? Where's the real Nero, and who are you?" Jiod said jokingly, taking his axe out and brandishing it in front of Nero's snout where it lay not a foot from the leaping flames of the campfire. Nero snorted, and blew a tiny sliver of mist from his left nostril, which clung to the axe. Jiod looked at his axe in bemusement. The mist faded.

"So..." Jiod said, and tugged on his axe. It didn't move. He frowned, and tugged more insistently. It didn't even budge. He let go of it in exasperation, and his eyebrows climbed up into his hairline as it stayed suspended in the air.

"I will unite every sentient being who will help under one banner. Then, we will hunt down and kill every single queen, crush their eggs, and slaughter their young. The silarions who now serve as slaves would be free, and without a queen to unite them they will be harmless. And I suspect you will join," said Nero.

"Right... why? Ow! Can you let it go?" said Jiod, having tried a roundhouse kick on the still hovering axe.

"Be patient, it will fall soon..." said Nero. "Ah, yes. You will join because," and now Nero brought a claw to Jiod's head and rotated it until he was looking him in the eye, away from the axe, "one queen has figured out a way to control humans. Those humans who attacked us were not originally the way they are now, though I fear the queen that once controlled them has moved on to other places, leaving them as you saw."

Jiod stopped trying to force Nero's claw away from his head, and slumped. If Nero hadn't been holding onto him, he would have collapsed onto the grass, and might have even rolled a little down the hill before getting up again.

"What?" he said, hoping he'd somehow misheard, that the queen was just influencing humans, had maybe taken a hostage, nothing like they could do to a viking.

"There is good news," said Nero, ignoring Jiod's disbelieving snort, "only one queen knew how, last time I checked, and they aren't exactly in the habit of helping each other."

"Can you kill a queen, if you use magic?" Jiod asked.

"No. I see I will have to explain why," said Nero. The axe chose that moment to remember that gravity was a thing, and that it should be obeyed.

"First, queens are resistant to all magic," said Nero, ignoring Jiod, who was quietly cursing as he nursed his foot. "Given enough time and a large enough hoard, I would be able to magically stop every one of a queen's hearts, or snap a critical part in the brain. Second, queens are extremely fast and powerful, and I would succeed only in tiring myself out and being a light snack before being able to do any real damage. Third, there is no queen alive not under the protection of a considerably large army of silarions, which although weak individually, would have no trouble slaying me if they attacked together, which they most certainly would do."

§

The army was a glittering stream of helmets, swords, and spears. It marched through the plains at a speed that anyone in the air would mark as 'not moving'.

 _They'd probably kill Nero on sight, if they've even heard of silarions. He just looks like a more dangerous one,_ Jiod thought. Thankfully, Nero wasn't stupid, and was going to recruit other dragons first. Still they'd probably be going to other armies like this one eventually, after gathering enough forces to make it a non-negotiable decision to join them.

§

This dragon's lair was beneath an impossibly huge, rotting, and withered tree, in a natural passageway wide enough for a large dragon (and they were _large_ ) but dark and damp enough to still make Jiod feel claustrophobic. A series of blood-chilling noises that seemed to be the very roots of innumerable trees poking into the hole's dirt walls whispered at Jiod. After a moment, he realized he could _understand_ it— _Who dares intrude upon my lair?_ —and a moment after that realized that of course it was a dragon, although he hadn't known a dragon could make their 'voice' so creepy, even though he should have because they didn't make any sounds recognizable as language. Nero kept walking along the downwards sloping hold without a word, so Jiod followed suit, walking down... down... down... down, until the dirt changed to stone, and no trace of outside light showed itself, yet Jiod could still see perfectly. The hole gradually leveled out into a corridor, and the corridor then became an empty cave.

"Is... is he here?" Jiod asked, looking around for any trace of a dragon of the same shape as Nero, but brown. How he could see was still a mystery to him.

"Yes, of course I'm here. My wards yelled at you to go away, didn't they?" a dragon's voice seemed to come from an empty corner of the cavern, and translated itself into a surprisingly normal viking accent in Jiod's head, unlike Nero's clipped, precise tone.

"Reveal yourself, please," said Nero,"he can't see you."

A brown dragon suddenly appeared in the middle of the cavern. There was no visible flash of light, or pop, or anything else one would normally associate with something suddenly appearing, it was as simple as there being nothing there one moment, and something the next. The dragon was almost twice the size of Nero, which said something, as Nero was big enough to rival a tall tree on Berk's height in length. The brown dragon's scales lacked any shine, and seemed completely and uniformly dull, although, now that Jiod really looked, it was probably the lack of any lighting, as Nero's silver scales too seemed to have lost their customary luster, and were just as lifeless as the brown dragon's.

"Now that you're visible, we can get the pleasantries out of the way. Jiod, Cerrax. Cerrax, Jiod. Jiod's a viking," said Nero.

"Great. Now I know how this is going to go, so let's get there. You're going to explain how important it is to do something or other, and that something huge is at stake. Well, I'm not at risk, anyone I actually care about is not at risk, and no, I do not actually care about you, Nero, and I will become bored and force you, both of you, out, or eat you. Now leave," Cerrax said, reminding Jiod of chief Adon when he spoke to other tribes of dragon hunts, or banding together for something or other... and it had worked out quite well for the tribe. Dragons rarely raided, vikings never raided, and the harvest was always good. The only time Jiod had seen Adon react as if he might agree was when something was a clear threat to the tribe. Jiod opened his mouth, ready to point out that _of course_ Cerrax was at risk—

—but Nero beat him to it. "Are you aware that silarions do not stop? They will find you and anyone else you care about. Even if you are better hidden or beneath the notice of most, they will find you eventually."

"I do have certain... measures, let's say, in place that will be quite sufficient against silarions. So what is it then, the queens finally band together to wipe us out?" Cerrax said, as if that were the expected possibility... _and it_ was, Jiod thought.

"I will not tread around the matter. It is not quite that bad, yet anyway, but one queen has known of a way to control humans as well," said Nero, who had _started to fidget_. Jiod could hardly believe it, but the evidence was in front of his eyes, well, hopefully anyways. The other alternative was he was hallucinating Nero casting his gaze onto the ground and sliding two claws past each other, producing a hollow rasp that grated on Jiods nerves just enough that it was annoying, but not enough that he felt he had to tell Nero to stop.

Cerrax actually sounded interested this time, as if he'd been told a decent riddle he'd already heard but was considering trying again anyway. "And your solution is?" he asked.

Nero seemed to wince, but met Cerrax's searching gaze again, and said, "Bring all dragons together, and then all humans. Hunt down and kill the remaining queens one by one."

Cerrax made a sound that could be interpreted as a chuckle. "That would fail miserably. In fact, looking at you, it probably already has," he said, pointing a claw at the gaping wound in Nero's chest, "how many others have you asked before me?" he asked.

"Five," said Nero, drawing the word out for a lot longer than was necessary.

"Out," said Cerrax, in a tone brooking no argument. They left.

"That could have gone better," said Jiod, wincing at the bright sunlight after being in complete darkness for so long.

"Indeed," Nero said grimly.

And so they were left there, outside Cerrax's lair, Cerrax who had been Nero's last hope in his plan for uniting everyone against the queens, and who had refused. Nero no longer had a plan, a purposeful objective, and Jiod hadn't had one since his own tribe had banished him. They stayed there, on the one bit of dry land large enough for a dragon of Nero's size, in the swamp, until the sun had sunken well beneath the horizon, and the stars shone forth. Then they were gone.

* * *

 **I know there are some plot holes, review to tell me where/what they are and I'll try to fix them. Key word: review!**


	20. Chapter 20

Jiod trudged through the endless plains, letting his feet carry him where they willed. He had his axe, but his boat was long gone, along with Holly and any useful supplies he might have otherwise been able to trade. Food was scarce, and he'd only found a rabbit the day before last to sustain him. Nero had flown off shortly before, unresponsive to Jiod's frantic shouts. Jiod became aware that he felt thirsty. He duly noted this, then discarded it. He felt a faint hope that he might come to some foe to test his strength against, that he may arrive in Valhalla. His body was complaining about the heat, so Jiod stopped thinking, and kept trudging.

A few more hours of continuous walking led to Jiod being unable to keep ignoring his body's demands for thirst, so he was exceptionally pleased when a shimmering pool of water revealed itself to him in the distance. Jiod picked up his pace. He might even be able to find some animals as easy meals. As Jiod neared the water, he saw that it looked quite odd. Its surface shimmered in a rapid rippling way that differentiated it from any pool he'd seen, and it seemed to stretch way too far to make sense. Jiod was gripped by uncertainty, and began a slow jog. His muscles burned and sweat which he no longer had the energy to wipe away shone upon his brow, but he had endured conditions far more extreme in dragon training. Still, it had never been so _hot_.

The tantalizing pool seemed to retreat into the distance with each step Jiod took. He stopped, and squinted at it. It really didn't seem right to him, he could even see the grass standing and waving in the wind, still the same shade of yellow as that on which he was currently traversing. Understanding hit him, and Jiod nearly fell to his knees in disappointment. Of course, it must be an illusion. An evil witch must have cast a spell upon this land to raise the hopes of travellers, then dash them.

Shortly after, Jiod noticed pools seemingly filled with water vanishing and materializing at random. Jiod grew feverish, his skin grew clammy and slick with sweat, and his vision became blurred. It became an exacting chore to make the next step, then a physical impossibility. The world became dim before Jiod's eyes, as if it were night time, yet the sun still shone. He decided to take a small break, and was vaguely surprised to find the ground rising to meet his face, or was his face meeting the ground? Before he could determine the answer, he was dead the to world.

§

Nero struggled against his bindings ineffectually, glaring at his captors with enough malice that he felt they should be melting where they stood. He couldn't even reason with them, as his mouth was bound shut with steel cables thick enough to immobilize a dragon five times his size.

A yellow dragon with red and blue stripes upon her sides and wings stepped up to him. She was about half his size, and the rest of his captors were a quarter again smaller, so he thought she was most likely the leader. She placed a claw over the hole in Nero's chest, resting a talon not a foot away from his main heart. Then, eyes alone warning him what would happen if he didn't cooperate, she brought her other claw up to his jaw and sliced the thick cable binding it with one deft movement. Nero rotated it gratefully. He wished he could bring up a talon to scratch it with, but his claws were thickly bound in several layers of cables and surrounded by thick sheets of fabric.

"Now, why have I been snatched by you rabble? I have things to do, and a strict time limit," he said.

For the first time, Nero glimpsed uncertainty in the yellow dragon's eyes. She looked to have been expecting a different response, but she recovered quickly enough, saying, "We know who you are, Nero, don't try to talk your way out."

"Right… I'm Nero. So why all this?" Nero asked, wiggling a little.

"Because we're going to kill you, of course. Did you think you could go on a rampage against the rest of dragonkind without retribution?" she said with a vicious snarl.

Nero stared at her blankly, then looked to the rest of the dragons for any hint as to what she was talking about. A blue scaled dragon with translucent wings and gold and silver markings lounged in a corner of the cavern, the very picture of indifference. Three more yellow dragons were settled attentively on the ground in a semi-organized looking line, their expressions also giving away nothing. Nero also caught a glimpse of a small red dragon that seemed to be hiding behind them, for he lost sight of it shortly after. Nero quickly racked his long memory, but could only recall killing one other dragon.

"I do not remember going on any rampages. I may have gone insane at one point, and the memory is dim, but I am confident that I merely raved at strangers about advanced mathematics and a certain atomic theory," said Nero. _Perhaps I have forgotten something I did when I was young, and they have ancestors who still recall it,_ he thought.

The yellow dragon who had confronted him now had a stormy expression, and did not look beyond violence. _Maybe she expected me to blurt out a confession,_ Nero thought. She was still young, and he felt some small sympathy for her despite the situation, for he had gone through the depressing situation of being forced to confront some belief or another as completely wrong in his own time. _Well, the world doesn't work that way. We all have to find that out eventually._

"Do you remember Ferand? You slew him in combat above one of your sacrificial altars. There were countless witnesses, they heard the very sky shake from the magnitude of the battle," she said, and began sharpening a claw. Although it had no real effect on the claws, it did make a quite horrid noise, as of a sword being scraped along the bricks and mortar of a wall.

Nero gave a snort of disbelief. "Ferand? He was the one who went on a rampage, and had many murders to his name. He was quite old, ten thousand years at the least. And what do you mean sacrificial altars? I have no such things, if I did do you think I would have been captured by you?"

The blue dragon suddenly rose and stood in a defensive position. "We have company," he said.

The yellow dragon abandoned her conversation with Nero for the moment, and looked to the cave's entrance. It wasn't the usual kind, inside a mountain or near the top of a steep cliff. Nero judged by the amount of vibrant vegetation covering the entrance that they were in a hollow in the middle of a small hill within a forest. He'd seen lairs like these before, but thought them too restricting, for the usage of fire would not be safe in such an area, and too hazardous, what with being on the ground where other dragons could set traps at the exit, or silarions could set an ambush. Nero thought on the blue dragon's statement. He couldn't detect anything himself, so he thought the blue must be using magic.

While everyone inside was looking to the entrance, an explosion sounded from above, shaking the cave and causing small chunks of rubble to fall from the ceiling. Another explosion followed so rapidly that only dragons would have been able to distinguish that they were too separate explosions. The yellow who had been performing Nero's interrogation started to turn in the split second after the first explosion hit with impressive speed, even for a dragon, and was still in the process of turning when a large chunk of rock fell from above and landed on her head, knocking her to the ground in a daze. The rest of the dragons scrambled for cover as a large section of the ceiling collapsed in a shower of boulders, earth, and dust. All was silent for a moment.

Then silarions swarmed into the gap and entered the cavern so thickly that the sun was completely blocked. Dozens of them clambered over the dragons within, who had all frozen on their entrance. There were silarions Nero could recognize at a glance, like the ones which lacked forepaws and instead had bat-like wings, and could set themselves on fire, making any wound they dealt burn with unnatural fire. Then there was ones he couldn't recognize, such as blue ones with a light gold pattern brushed over their scales and bird-like heads, and rows of spines on the tail that extended warningly when they entered.

Nero's thoughts on the silarions were chased from his thoughts when he saw who entered last—a flaming silarion, and riding atop it, a human wearing a large black scaled cloak, holding a hooked staff, which he whirled above his head as he roared at the silarions. Nero took a close look at that cloak, and felt sick. It was too thick and the scales too large to be from any silarion Nero knew of, even the dragons turned to silarions. _Don't think like that, it's probably not Rena, there are many black dragons in the world,_ he thought. Besides, his shell-sister lived in a volcano a considerable distance away, and no human, even one who commanded silarions, would be able to kill Rena without obliterating anything in the vicinity, for her last act would be to draw on her own body's reserves to do so. Still… that cloak should not exist. No dragons had been killed by humans since a time before Nero had even hatched, when the great human wizards of the age had struck dragons out of the sky like flies with a word and a gesture.

Then, the human spoke. "Dragons. The plague of this world," he said, voice twisted with disgust, and head hidden beneath his cloak. "Wait… why is this one tied up. A traitor?"

The human jumped off the dragon and moved toward Nero. His feet stomped as he walked. He neared Nero at a slow pace, and Nero saw with a little shock that the human was extremely skinny, practically a walking fish bone. How he could hold up the weight of the dread cloak was something Nero couldn't fathom. He stood before Nero, and his face was now revealed. Half of it lie slack, the other raised up in an obscene grin. There was nothing in those green eyes but misery and a terrible purpose as he said, "I can use traitors. Serve me, and I will not slay you like I will these… things."

Nero quickly thought. He could pretend to serve the human and escape or kill him at the earliest possibility, or he could die here along with his kidnappers. The choice seemed obvious, but he didn't want his kidnappers to die, they were still dragons.

"I'll help you, on the condition that you let them live," said Nero, sweeping his head to encompass the other dragons, who were coated with silarions.

The human laughed. "No," he said, hooking his staff under Nero's chin and looking into his eyes with manic glee. "they will have to die." Nero stared into the human's bright green eyes, searching for any shred of sympathy. All he saw was that false humour and the all consuming emptiness underneath, threatening to pull him in and swallow him if he looked too long. Nero wrenched his gaze away. He didn't want them to die, but he had never considered himself a hero. A revolutionary, maybe, an adventurer, of course, but a hero? No. He had lived too long for that.

"I… I accept," Nero said at last.

A muffled choking sound came from one of the dragons carpeted with silarions.

"I truly am sorry," Nero said, using draconian so the human wouldn't understand him.

The human raised his staff into the air and whirled it, roaring, once more. The silarions seemed to understand him, and started tearing at the dragons, leading to a slow and painful death. Dragons could endure insane amounts of punishment, and they'd have every scale and shred of skin torn away before they died. It was a fate Nero would have wished only on a queen. He averted his gaze, wishing he had some gold to magically ease their pain.

§

Jiod slowly blinked himself awake. His first feeling was of extreme thirst, and a blinding headache. He sat up, and the first thing he checked for was his axe, his last remaining possession. He felt a moment of panic before he spotted it propped up against a wall of the… tent. Jiod rubbed his eyes, ready for the illusion to drop away before his eyes. It didn't. He wonderingly put a hand up to the grey fabric. He was lying in a cot in a simple pyramid shaped tent. The floor was grass which had been pressed flat. A wooden slab lay with a height at the level of the cot beside him, bearing a mug of water. Jiod drank it the moment his hands stopped shaking, not caring that it was warm, just that it was water.

As he was holding the empty mug, gazing into it as if more water might appear if he looked hard enough, someone entered the tent. He looked up to see a man in black robes.

"Ah, you are awake at last. I am Emilio, doctor of this division of the army of the solar empire. I trust you are able to walk?" Emilio said.

Jiod froze. The solar empire… did they have anything to do with the army which had attacked the castle Nero had flown them to? Some of the soldiers had worn the insignia of a black sun… then he remembered himself, and stood up, swaying slightly.

"Yes, I can walk. Where am I? I can't seem to remember too much," Jiod said, deciding to take the affectation of amnesia until he understood more about where, exactly, he was.

* * *

 **New chapter, yay! I have a more solid plot now, and I think I'm going to use the short version. I'll see what happens. What do you want, short story or long one?**

 **Where'd my reviewers go? I see that at least 3 people are reading... review please? It makes me happy. :)**


	21. Chapter 21

The situation was, without a doubt, a most grim one. The strain the wound was creating on Nero's body made what would have been an effortless flight a long and hard struggle, and was not helped by having the human killer flying next to him on a flaming silarion. The human urged the silarion closer to Nero, who was in no position to dispute its proximity. Indeed, he barely even noticed it through the haze of tiredness which had developed over his vision.

"Do you have a name?" the human asked, standing fearlessly on the silarion's back, as if they were having a polite discussion on the ground.

As Nero remained silent, dredging up the necessary willpower to talk to the human, he spoke again.

"Do dragons even have names?"

"Sometimes. I am Nero," Nero replied shortly, unwilling to be drawn into conversation with the murderous madman.

"Good, good… I am Hic-I mean… hmm," the human said, thoughtfully stroking his chin. Nero turned his head back to the difficult task of flying. If he had been more alert, he would have thought the human's response odd, but he was anything but well rested, despite having slept for who knows how long after the kidnappers— _dead kidnappers,_ part of his brain whispered—had caught him in those silver cords and knocked him out. They must have had a great store of treasure to make an illusion so strong Jiod hadn't even noticed them.

The human finally decided upon an answer, saying "You can call me Drago."

Nero did nothing but give a tired grunt, and continued flying, hoping he would go away.

"Now… Nero, I have something I need done. With magic, you understand," Drago said. Even in his tired state Nero, had enough experience that he could hear the eagerness Drago was just barely managing to conceal under an assumed demeanour of unconcern.

Nero tried to think. He couldn't come up with anything fancy at the moment, so he simply said, "I am sorry… I cannot… perform magic."

"That is… disappointing," said Drago, "still, I am sure I can find an appropriate use for you somewhere." Drago's words held the hint of a promise, or perhaps a threat.

Drago still held his incautious position aboard the silarion. A faint idea came to Nero. Perhaps, if he pushed him just right… then common sense took over. There were too many silarions in Drago's control for him to _not_ be caught, and when he was, Nero would die. He would be able to escape with ease, and most likely even slay Drago, if he was at top physical condition and swallowed some gold. Once again, he decided to just see where this lead, and wait until he had a better chance of dealing with Drago. He just hoped Jiod would still be in the area by the time he got back.

§

Jiod was riding a horse, which was eating up the distance as Jiod would eat a sandwich. Slowly, but he would get it done because there was nothing else to eat. The general of the army himself had met with him, then consulted a strange crystal and declared him 'clean'. Jiod was then immediately placed in the vanguard of the army, with the promise of swift promotion if he showed as much skill with the axe as he claimed. Jiod thought it shouldn't be a problem with his berserker blood, but just in case he took to sparring with the other men in the vanguard. He had expected them to be cold and exhibit barely restrained hostility towards him, but they seemed to accept him as one of their own readily enough, and trained him up to a 'barely competent' horseman under the supervision of a particularly hard to please officer, who nevertheless offered him sincere congratulations. Jiod later learned that a certain bet on his proficiency level may have played a part in this, but found he didn't care overly much.

§

Jiod stood on one end of a circle of cleared and flattened grass, roughly twenty feet in Diameter.

"Ready!" Jiod called. Hammond stepped forward from his side, raising his shield warily. The men had learned to be wary of Jiod and his lightning fast strikes, fast enough that some doubted it possible for anyone who wielded an axe of his size until they saw it themselves. In truth, Jiod had been a merely average fighter as a viking, and was beginning to realize why anyone not a viking was automatically considered a weakling.

"Ready," Hammond echoed back, somewhat more reluctantly. He would not hold back, whatever he had heard about Jiod's skills. Jiod was glad about that, as fighting opponents who weren't even trying was just wrong.

Jiod leapt toward Hammond, aiming to hit the shield with enough force to numb the arm, leaving him behind throughout the entire duel. Jiod brought his axe down in an earth shattering blow… only to feel it slide off the shield with almost no resistance, leaving him perilously overbalanced. Hammond's earlier attitude was completely gone, he now wore a feral grin as he swept his longsword upwards at an angle, forcing Jiod to do an awkward sort of twirl which brought him too close to the shield for comfort. Hammond immediately and violently shoved Jiod with the shield as the sword barely missed denting Jiod's borrowed helmet. Jiod stumbled, and Hammond hooked a leg under Jiod's knee, sending him tumbling to the ground. Jiod felt something wrench his axe out of his grip, and saw Hammond hook the edge with his sword and fling it away. The sword was summarily levelled at Jiod's chest.

"Do you yield?" Hammond asked.

"Y-yes," said Jiod. It was the first time he'd been beaten by one of the soldiers of the Solar Empire, and it left a sour taste in his mouth as he clambered to his feet.

"Good match, though you certainly need practice," Hammond said, and extended a hand. Jiod uncertainly shook it.

"If you need a sparring partner, I'll be at the designated arena at the same times," Hammond said, and then strode off, whistling.

§

Nero felt unbearably frustrated. He had thought his wound would close much faster than its current rate. He felt sure it had been a lot shorter last time. However, though dragons have excellent memory, some become lost with time, such as the exact length of time the chest wound would need to heal. Drago had left the new 'nest', which was nothing more than a small island carpeted by a swarm of silarions and a dragon on some sort of mission, something about finding a lost tooth. Nero couldn't wait for the time when the silarions would finally have lairs ready for everyone… no, wait, he would be gone soon, of course. And to achieve that, he needed to get rid of Drago. The obvious solution was to wait until Drago returned and dismounted from the silarion he was riding, and disembowel him right then and there.

* * *

 **Little bit of random stuff, sorry for the short chapter. If you review, I'll put up longer ones. :)**


	22. Chapter 22

**When you feel the pressure…**

* * *

General Duvik was of the opinion that the recruit was ready to undergo the trials. The trials were usually not taken until several years of extensive exercises and training sessions, but any recruit could be a spy, and the trails were the only way short of torture to be sure.

The clerk looked up from his desk, left hand holding a quill in a death grip, right twitching spasmodically. Duvik never really remembered his name. Rilen, perhaps. Or maybe Flobbin.

"Well? What are you waiting for, put the order through," Duvik said impatiently, once again wishing that he hadn't frightened the man quite so badly the first time. It was getting ridiculous. Force someone to feel as if they were being burned alive _once_ and their work suffered forever.

The clerk half rose out of his seat, looking as if he was about to bolt. Duvik idly wondered if he actually thought he'd be able to get away. "I'm… I'm so sorry sir, but the laws very clearly state that anyone taking the trials must be a willing participant, and fully knowledgeable of the dangers that come with—"

"Oh, he'll be informed, and willing. Now put it through, or—"

What Duvik would otherwise do is a mystery. At that point, the clerk feverishly scrawled several important looking messages, waved over a page, and handed them off with rapid instructions of where to deliver them. The page rattled them off verbatim and rushed off. The clerk couldn't disguise a sigh of relief.

§

Jiod's sparring matches had become more and more instructional each time, until even he admitted, if only to himself, that they were basically dressed up lessons. At the moment, he was hard at work hammering Hammond's impenetrable defence with blows of varying strength. After being told that he 'overbalanced so often a cow could do it better', he'd been using his axe more like a spear against Hammond, and then switching to a swing to try to trip him up.

"Really Jiod, you need to hide your intentions better if you're going to be even barely competent at this," Hammond said, swaying ever so slightly and avoiding a beheading by a hair. "And don't just stand still," he added sharply. Jiod didn't even bother to nod, resigning himself to the fact that he'd have to keep shuffling around Hammond from now on, despite the fact that when fighting drag-silarions, you were supposed to present a strong core to meet them head-on. That was how it usually worked, every lesson he'd have to memorize one more thing that he wouldn't be able to get wrong, ever. Hammond never gave Jiod actual punishments, since he wasn't _officially_ his mentor, but a disappointed scowl and a few minutes of desperate defence was more than enough to ensure discipline. Jiod could tell that most of this helped, and appreciated it, but often wondered if something about him actually angered the man, or if he was just naturally aggressive to everyone.

A young page sprinted towards the two men, Jiod hacking ineffectually and Hammond lazily parrying every blow with a mere flick of his wrist.

"Master Hammond, urgent message to be delivered directly to you," the page said, standing as far away from the duelling pair as he could, having noted Jiod's reckless abandonment of any attempt at a stance and mad anger fuelled rushes, which were ever more easily stopped cold.

"Then I'd best take it," Hammond said, relinquishing his two handed grip on his sword to bring one towards the page.

"You look quite busy, perhaps I should leave it—"

"It's urgent, yes?" Hammond interrupted. He gave the boy enough time for a nod before saying, "Then give it here," beckoning with outstretched fingers.

The page hurried towards Hammond, only getting close enough to shove a few papers into his hand before retreating. Hammond began to read the papers, glancing up every to often to fend off Jiod's increasingly sporadic attacks.

"Looks like you might have a problem, Jiod," Hammond said after a few minutes, long enough for Jiod to tire himself well beyond normal exhaustion. Jiod did not respond, only moving enough to let air pass through his lungs, and even that grudgingly.

§

"So I have to pass some stupid magical test, and if I don't I die," Jiod said.

"Alternatively, you could just leave," Hammond suggested, appearing wholly unconcerned as he sat in today's 'arena', tending to a mace, a lance, a bow, and _four_ swords all at once.

"Well… I'll be completely accepted here, if I pass?" Jiod asked. He didn't want to just give up on returning to his tribe. He was still a viking, and would solve the problem of how to expose Berk's demise without getting first killed on showing his face.

"You are not ready," Hammond said, looking Jiod over, "but I suppose you may pass if you tried."

"You didn't answer my—"

"Your stupid question was obviously rhetorical," Hammond said.

"I'll do it," Jiod muttered, "so when do I start?"

"An hour," Hammond said.

§

"You know, I really expected more than an hour to train for this… whatever it is," Jiod complained, looking suspiciously at the ring of soldiers around him. He didn't _think_ they were the same army that had attacked Nero's castle. Only a few soldiers possessed full plate army here, and he'd yet to see anyone with a black sun, but they _were_ called the Solar Empire, and it never hurt to be too wary. "Can you at least give me a hint?" he asked. They were silent, as they had been any time Jiod attempted to talk to them.

"I'm afraid they can't do that," said a jovial voice from behind him. Jiod, startled, turned around, and spotted the general sliding between a small gap between two soldiers, which immediately closed after he entered. Jiod remembered him, he was the general who'd determined whether Jiod be allowed to stay using a rock. Granted, it was a flawless ice blue crystal that screamed magic, but it didn't glow, or have the twisting mist inside that Nero's heart stone thing had. "You see, the test is different for everyone who tries it," the general continued.

"Ah. Yes. Thanks. So..." Jiod said, flustered. He hadn't been able to prepare, and he didn't have the sense of detachment he had the last time he'd talked to the general.

The general gave Jiod a reassuring smile, but the effect was rather ruined by his eyes, which seemed to be frozen into permanent flinty slits. He took the same chunk of crystal out from one of a number of pouches tied onto his belt, and placed it in the middle of the circle of soldiers.

"A touch will suffice to start the trials, but you may want to lay down before you do," the general said, then backed out of the ring, leaving Jiod alone in a circle of grass slightly greener than the grass of a few days riding ago, enclosed in a ring of solders. With a mental shrug, he lay himself down next to the crystal, then reached over with a finger and touched it. Nothing happened. He frowned, removed his finger, and tried again. That was when he realized everything had disappeared, and he was on a circle of grass floating in space with a blue crystal in the center.

Jiod did the only sensible thing a viking would do in such a situation, and panicked.

"Shut up, you idiot," said a voice without any intonation or way to distinguish it from any other voice, making it completely unique.

"What, where, who," Jiod said, scrambling to find a reply.

"Not the brightest, are we?" the voice said again, this time with a faint tinge to it that made it sound slightly bored. "At least you stopped before how and why." Another ghost of tone made it into the voice, making it sound the tiniest bit amused.

"Right. Dream. I'm having a dream," Jiod said. Jiod calmed after he said this. Of course that was what was going on… "I wonder what they dosed me with."

"A dream, eh? Well, if that's how you choose to see it, then who am I to argue," the voice said again. "Just call me your dream voice, or your conscience, or whatever."

Jiod spent an eternity just sitting in that circle of grass with the crystal. Jiod spent the briefest moment sitting in the circle of grass with the crystal. However long it actually was, the voice said, "We're here! Now go get some experience. Maybe you'll even level up." The voice seemed to think this was hilarious, and followed with an almost recognizable attempt at laughter, the most emotion it had displayed thus far. "Let's see… oh yes, past present and future, like that Christmas movie," it said, again seemingly delighted for no reason.

The circle of grass started to spin sickeningly under Jiod's feet, faster and faster until he felt he should be flying off fast enough to rival a catapult, but his body stayed anchored to the little circle of grass. The rotations sped up to the limit Jiod thought anything could spin, and then spun faster anyway, so fast the very darkness surrounding the circle seemed to blur, and the circle itself seemed to blend in with it. Everything became black, then red, then blue, until every single colour of the rainbow had shown itself. Then the world resolved into recognizable shapes… he tilted his head and saw clouds up above, and the moon. Or was it the sun? It was incredibly bright and clear for night. He looked underneath him, and saw an ocean of water… speeding by at an incredible pace. Shocked, Jiod turned his head, and saw… black scales where his body would be. Down were clawed feet, and he couldn't move the way he was used to. Then he realized he didn't know how to fly, and his wings faltered. For a second he felt as if he might plummet down into the water, but instincts, or something, seemed to take over, and Jiod was gliding along as smoothly as if he were in his skiff, sailing off to explore the unknown. Jiod again took a brief look at himself. There was no doubt, he himself had found and killed a night fury before, and this looked to be the same, although the one he'd killed had been a dark blue, not black.

The water sped fast, and the flock started to slow. Jiod tried to get his current body to fly around and check out the surroundings, but the something took over again, and he found himself diving along with the rest of the flock towards an island.

 _Just a dream, just a dream, a dream, just… just a dream,_ Jiod thought to himself over and over, an endless litany. His night fury self fired bolt after bolt at various watch towers, and he could only watch as vikings dropped from it like lemmings from a cliff. Silarions started to wing their way back with prizes in tow; sheep by the dozen, a few oxen, and even some (dead) vikings. Jiod's body decided it was time to go, and dove for one last watchtower, angling itself in a way that would take him on a direct course back to… somewhere. Jiod felt as if he knew a lot more than he remembered, not just about vikings, but about dragons as well…

Jiod was rudely yanked out of his thoughts when he was suddenly enveloped in a net, tangling his wings and fouling up his position. The night fury's body beat its wings desperately, entangled though they were, and set a crash course for the forest that coated a good nine-tenths of the island.

"Hey! I thought I was supposed to be doing a trial or something! What is this? Am I supposed to learn the enemy's suffering or something? Cause I already learned that! Let me out!" Jiod shouted, hoping it might break out of his dream and get the soldiers to wake him up. All that came out of Jiod's mouth—or, jaws—was a strangled cross between roaring and screeching.

And then he hit the ground.

* * *

 **Made up a little poem sort of thing. I'm going to put up a line each chapter, see how that goes. Just for fun, you know.**

 **Here you go Durin. You have managed to stir me out of the evil pot of procrastination, and finally edit this chapter to make it readable and uploadable.**

 **Thanks to every single person who reviewed, y'all kept me doing this. If I hadn't gotten those early reviews by SoNevable, I wouldn't have gotten past chapter 4, and that's the truth. It means a lot.**


	23. Chapter 23

**The strain is hard to measure...**

* * *

Hiccup wondered if he looked suitably menacing. He'd arranged his dragon cloak _just so_ , and arranged his expression in a delightfully deranged fashion, made even more so since he couldn't move the muscles in the right side of his face after that nasty blow that dragon had given him. He _had_ made a cloak out of her, but Hiccup still thought that if he could still feel emotions, he'd probable still he mad about that.

Hiccup's new mount arrived at the cave that his… guest was staying in whenever he didn't have a mission. If he didn't know better, Hiccup would have thought Nero was sulking instead of in terrible, barely concealed pain over his wound. Hiccup took a long look around the interior of the cave. Despite the dreary atmosphere outside, complete with a drizzle that only served to make the air even more bland and muggy, the interior of Nero's cave was quite bright. Then again, everything seemed bright to Hiccup these days… he squinted, but didn't see Nero anywhere. The cave wasn't that big…

"You have come for me?"

Hiccup turned around. Not too slowly, not too fast, but at the exact speed that showed he was both unconcerned and slightly annoyed. "I have a new mission for you," Hiccup said.

"Anything, for you, master," the large silver dragon blocking the cave mouth said. Hiccup couldn't be sure, but the dragon's 'voice' rung sarcastically, or perhaps even mockingly, to his ears. Hiccup shook it off; it was probably just a memory from his stupid childhood.

"Well, I heard gold can heal dragons who can talk," Hiccup said, studying Nero for any hints of deception while effortlessly maintaining a persona of madness himself. Not having to deal with emotions came with a _lot_ of benefits, among them allowing him to concentrate fully on his goals, whatever they might be.

"Yes… that is a rumour that has been going around for quite some time. The truth is, they do not heal us, but allow us to activate magical abilities. Unfortunately, I cannot cast, so it would only heal me," Nero said.

It was an annoying answer, but Hiccup couldn't detect any falsehoods from his manner of… speech, if you could call it that, and the hatchling he'd interrogated hadn't told him anything about what would happen if a dragon who couldn't use magic ate gold. An oversight on his part, he admitted, if only to himself. "My scouts have found a small human army. They will doubtless have enough gold to heal you completely," Hiccup said. For once, the dragon seemed to be at a loss for words. He stayed silent for a minute, swaying, then suddenly growled, frightening the nightmare, who whimpered and retreated behind Hiccup. Hiccup absent mindedly stroked its snout. "Well? What are you waiting for, a signed and engraved invitation? Go organize that rabble," Hiccup said, nonchalantly waving a hand in the direction of the mute dragon's lairs.

"As you say, lord Drago," Nero said, and darted away far more quickly than his enormous bulk would seem to allow.

"Meanwhile, we'll see if there isn't a way to bring a certain dragon back from the dead," Hiccup said to the monstrous nightmare, who just looked at him. Hiccup shook his head in a reflex action at the normal dragon's strange cross between being unable to understand a word Hiccup would say, and immediate and completely clear perception. Hiccup thought that perhaps, if he just gathered enough dragons together…

Night had fallen not a minute ago, with Nero leading his raid against the small human encampment that only an utter fool would call an army. Hiccup strolled into his personal cave, smiling his demented grin again. He'd been practising. He was well rewarded when he heard a desperate shriek, and strolled slowly and maliciously forward. He didn't _enjoy_ doing it, but he was no longer averse to torture or anything else that had seemed distasteful, or even unthinkable, to him before. Hiccup grabbed a well-used knife from a wooden rack, and stepped even more slowly towards the trembling dragon, making each footstep audible. The miserable thing squirmed, trembling in fear, but couldn't move an inch. It was one of Hiccup's own contraptions, a wooden exoskeleton that could be adjusted and fitted to nearly any type and size of dragon there was. And once it was, and a few judiciously placed ropes were tied off, it made most movement impossible, much less escape.

"I hope you're quite comfortable," Hiccup said, intentionally raising his voice to a pleasant tone. The little yellow dragon squirmed frantically again, ignoring the lines the ropes scored against pale, leathery skin devoid of scales.

Hiccup sat down, and leaned closer. "I said—"

"Y-yes, I… am," the hatchling cried, cringing as far away from Hiccup as he could—which was to say, maybe a quarter of an inch.

"Good, good..." Hiccup said, and sharpened his knife against a whetstone made for the sole purpose of making a noise like a knife being sharpened, which he would never do to these ones, of course. What good were sharp knives? Then they couldn't feel pain… and when they felt pain, Hiccup imagined he could feel an echo of it as well, a soft scream deep within, and he wanted to feel something, even if it did used to be unpleasant.

"Now, where should we start?" Hiccup asked idly, still 'sharpening'. He looked over the little dragon with a critical eye. "It appears you still have a few scales left. We'll take care of those, of course… and then, perhaps the wings..." The dragon only whimpered. It knew what was to come.

Hiccup emerged trying, and failing, to whistle an old viking tune, sporting a dragon hide cloak, now with yellow stripes spiralling decoratively around his shoulders. The yellow scales matched the rest of his cloak extremely well. He couldn't wait to see what the red dragon would add to it…

§

Jiod awoke with an ear-shattering groan. Oh, that's right—he was still dreaming. And it seemed his dream kept him in the body of a night fury. _Probably because I'm supposed to be 'learning something',_ Jiod thought to himself, bitterly remembering the initiation he'd had to take with the village elder, who'd somehow cast a spell to keep him in the forest with every single dragon in the arena released from the arena just to hunt him until he 'learned something' from it.

Jiod suddenly felt great confusion. Then he became more confused, because he couldn't find a reason for why he should be confused. He decided to break the cycle before it looped, and opened his eyes. He was in a forest. Well, no surprise there, the dream probably drew on his memories. And he had ropes twining all around him, keeping him from doing more than a helpless belly flop. The confusion arose again, so strong it nearly smothered all of Jiod's other thoughts. Then came a flash of realization, then horror, sadness, and finally anger, nearly as strong as the confusion had been. His body—er, the night fury's body, of course—started twitching and growling. He felt his mouth fill with a warm, muggy substance... and promptly opened it and spat. _Stop!_ he scolded himself, the anger infecting him and making his mental voice sharp. _It won't help, struggling, only make it tighter. And a blast, at this range?_ Jiod shuddered to think of what would happen to him if he'd succeeded, thanking all the gods it was just a dream. _The best decision, right now,_ he rationalized, _would be to rest and regain enough strength to break these stupid ropes._

 _Fine..._

Jiod felt disbelief course through him. Instincts he'd expected, of course. But apparently he had another _consciousness_ in here with him. _Who are you?_ he asked.

 _I do not know. I was take from clutch when small and stealed. I had serve mother for with mind and not remember until now not now but not ever now,_ the other consciousness replied, and sent sorrow.

Shock washed over Jiod. It wasn't just another human consciousness stuck in this body with him, it was the dragon himself! Except it wasn't, it was a baby who, if he was reading its thoughts right, barely remembered anything about... anything. _I guess I'm supposed to teach you or something._

 _No. Get out. I am_ me _now!_

Jiod felt a great force press against him, but not 'his' body, which seemed to be getting harder and harder to feel... with a jolt of horror, he realized what was happening—he'd never learn his lesson if he was trapped just watching events forever, and probably starve to death—and struggled with all his might against the dragon's mental push. But the dragon had the momentum, and was simply stronger besides. Jiod found himself locked into a corner of consciousness. He tried shouting at the dragon, but then the dragon would punish him, and he'd be forced back into a hazy apathy. It seemed the only course of action would be as reluctant advisor, but Jiod was a viking. Vikings have... stubbornness issues.

* * *

 **Here you go, a new chapter fresh from plagiarism inc. me. So. I like feedback. But do whatever you feel like. :)**


	24. Chapter 24

**That which you will endeavour…**

* * *

Nero flew onwards, a flock of silarions behind him. The endless plains of the south dropped into the distance. Nero carefully surveyed the ground below, not missing a single detail. He'd picked this route hoping to find a trace of Jiod, just in case he was in trouble. Nero wasn't usually in the habit of going out of his way to help others, but it wasn't Jiod's fault that he'd been left in the middle of nowhere.

Dragons had uncanny navigation skills from birth, and Nero shortly felt the twinge in his gut that meant he was nearing his destination. He hoped the humans would put up at least some resistance—the more silarions killed, the better. Nero flew up, hiding himself in the abundant cloud cover, trusting the silarions to follow, and hoping they wouldn't. If they got spotted, it would give the humans time to prepare. Thankfully, Drago wasn't leading the silarions with him, having muttered something about a lost tooth and departing for who knows where, so Nero had free reign, as long as he didn't blatantly sabotage the mission.

The sun shone brightly, and the white, fluffy clouds blanketed the sky, providing disappointingly adequate cover to the silarions. Nero looked down through the clouds, his vision able to penetrate even their thick cover. The silarion swarm was almost centred over the human's encampment. Nero pointed a talon downwards. Drago had assured him that the silarions would understand the meaning of simple gestures, and even, apparently, human speech. A few tests proved that the silarions could not themselves speak, though Drago was right about them understanding and obeying commands. Nero hadn't found a hint of silarions being able to understand anything beyond their queen, for all the time he'd spent fighting them, so assumed that Drago must have access to powerful dark magic, able to mimic the abilities of a silarion queen.

The silarions stayed in the air for a few seconds, then the ones closest to Nero noticed him and dived downwards, causing the ones slightly farther away to do the same. The effect was like that of a rock thrown into the ocean in reverse, an expanding funnel of diving silarions. It looked rather like a tornado from below, and must have been an awe inspiring sight for the humans, in the few seconds before they were attacked. After most of the silarions had gone down to do battle, Nero descended below the cloud cover in order to better observe.

Tents had been pitched haphazardly over a wide area, but even in the brief time it had been since the start of the battle, most of them had been flattened, were on fire, or both. A badly armed assortment of defenders pitched whatever they had on hand at the silarions, but while most of their attacks were ineffectual, a human died almost every time a silarion moved. These humans were caught completely off guard, unprepared, and seemed to have absolutely no idea how to deal with the situation. Nero inwardly groaned as a soldier, having had a lucky strike and brought down a zippleback, proceeded to wave his sword around in the air like an idiot, and was promptly devoured by a hungry gronkle, which then sat in the middle of a defensive line completely ignoring the half dozen men pounding on its rocky hide with tent stakes, rocks, the odd dagger, and, absurdly enough, a lit torch.

Everywhere he looked, Nero saw silarions killing and devouring humans. Soon, the encampment was nothing but bodies, ashes, and a tiny circle of surviving humans, standing around another one who seemed to be sleeping. Around the remaining humans lie silarion corpses. They seemed unmoved by the complete destruction of the rest of their camp, standing stolidly in their circle, moving only to take on the odd encroaching silarion. A few gaps in the circle appeared to be where some of their number had fallen. Nero sighed, wishing the rest of the humans had fought so well. As it was, once Nero gave the order, they would be easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of silarions. He decided to hold off on ordering the attack until the silarion's had eaten. Perhaps the humans would grow brains before then and run away to fight another day. Nero wished he had enough gold to transform back to his human form and berate them for not doing so, but then dismissed the thought. _If I had enough gold, I'd just heal myself and kill Drago,_ he thought bitterly. He was only barely keeping himself doing something rash by imagining the expression on Drago's face when he'd be cornered and killed for what he'd done at Nero's claws. First though, Nero would have to pretend loyalty long enough to get the gold Drago had promised.

The humans still hadn't left, or even shifted from their positions in the circle. Most of the silarions were finished with their gruesome meals, and had risen into an ominous cloud once more.

"Hold position. I'm going to see what they're up to," Nero said, feeling a strange mix of foolishness and guilt at speaking to silarions. He winged toward the humans, and landed just outside their circle, causing the ground to shudder with his weight. In unison, three soldiers stepped towards him, swords raised, expressions hidden beneath their helmets.

"Wait," Nero said to them. They stopped where they moved, and Nero heard most of them stop breathing, then shakily resume. "Why have you not left yet?" Nero asked them, injecting angry disbelief into his 'voice'.

None of them made any noise for some time, then one spoke up, saying, "We are overseeing a trial, and our artefact can not be used until the trial is completed. If you wish to live, dragon, you will fly as far from here as you can."

Either they had an object of mass destruction, or they were bluffing, though Nero couldn't imagine why they would have stayed for so long if that was the case. Nero was aware that those kinds of weapons did exist, and used to be activated whenever two warring factions clashed over something. Eventually they had been shattered as time passed, until Nero believed there were none left. Nero might have tried to delay until they could activate it, then fly away as fast as he could, but Drago wasn't with the silarion army.

Nero looked at the humans regretfully. He didn't want them to have to die, but it was for the greater good. The best course of action would be to take their weapon and learn to use it against Drago, eliminating the silarions and his threat in one stroke.

Nero rose into the air, calling to the silarions and pointing at the humans. The silarions threw themselves against the defence, building a wall of bodies the humans needed to stand on top of in order to avoid being cornered and cooked. They died valiantly, but still they died. Nearly an eighth of the silarion army was killed by the small group of soldiers, fighting as grimly and tirelessly as statues until the end. Nero stepped forward as the last one fell to a claw through his back and saw a tiny space completely untouched by the battle. He examined the unconscious body that lay there, holding a blue shard of crystal, completely ignoring the last choking words of the last soldier as his life drained away into the grass. The human lying with the crystal was Jiod, and the crystal itself was a certain device that gathered information from the environment and bestowed some of it on any sentient being to touch it. It was an extremely useful tool from the old ages, but one that carried the risk of bringing insanity to anyone who tried to use it. Just to be sure, Nero reached towards the shimmering crystal, glowing with an inner light similar to a heart stone now that it was active, and watched as his talon was repelled by an invisible force.

Nero sat back on his hind legs, wondering what to do.

§

A viking had found them. From what Jiod could see from the dragon's eye, he was a child. He couldn't help thinking of his own discovery of an injured night fury, then quickly stopped thinking of it before the dragon could 'hear' the thought. _Calm down, if you act like that he's_ definitely _going to kill us,_ Jiod told the dragon crossly. The dragon ignored him, and struggled frantically against the impossible maze of ropes Jiod had been trying to give instructions on how to loosen, but the dragon didn't want to hear it.

"I'm… I'm gonna kill you, dragon," the kid said, voice wavering. _Oh gods he's got a knife,_ Jiod thought, panicked. The dragon finally figured out how useless struggling was and lied limp. _Help! Do something!_ his mental scream made Jiod dizzy, and it took several seconds before he realized he could again control the dragon's body, except this time the dragon was helping, mentally instructing Jiod on how to move. Not that it did much good, in their position.

"I'm gonna, gonna tear out your heart, and bring it to my father," he said, and raised the knife.

 _Um, um… uh…_ Jiod thought. Then he followed his own advice, closing his eyes and making a low rumble in the back of his throat. Then he opened them to slits, and observed the kid collapse to his knees, pressing the flat of the knife against the top of his head. "I did this," he whispered.

Jiod, with time to actually think for once, distantly realized that dragon, or silarion, or whatever they were called, had senses that far outstripped that of a human. The dragon snapped his eyes open at the sound of the blade sawing against his side. Panic once more flooded through Jiod as the dragon sought to reassert control. Jiod forced the false emotion away with no little effort, thinking, _Wait! He's cutting the ropes, not you!_ The thought got through, and the dragon's mind calmed down, simmering with emotions Jiod couldn't read. Then the last of the ropes snapped, and the dragon reclaimed his body quick as lightning, and leapt onto the viking, knocking him down and staring into his eyes. He opened his mouth, and Jiod, horrified, tried to retake control before the kid was slaughtered. Jiod failed to take even superficial control, and could only watch as they roared at the viking, then bounded away, leaving him shaking and terrified.

 _At least you didn't kill him or anything,_ Jiod thought, _but is it necessary to crash into every tree in this forest?_ They gave a roar of despair, and the dragon gave Jiod a picture of his tail, and then another one with a crushed fin, along with a general feeling of waiting. _So… we have to wait here until your tail heals?_ Jiod thought, and got a terse _yes_.

The dragon couldn't help trying to fly anyway, roaring all the while, until a particularly disastrous attempt caused them to tumble into a mid air roll that they couldn't end, and sent them crashing into a large gorge from a height that might have crushed some other body part had the dragon not extended and flapped their long wings before they hit the bottom.

 _Great, now look what you've done. How am I supposed to learn a lesson and wake up now?_ Jiod thought irritably. The dragon, from what Jiod could glean of his thoughts, couldn't care less.

* * *

 **Here it is! It's longer than the last chapter, at least. I'm thinking of writing a new fanfic after this one's done, and want the opinion of anyone who reads this: Should I write like this, or longer chapters, but release them with longer intervals in between?**


	25. Chapter 25

**Will lead you to the nether…**

* * *

The island was silent, and had been so for hours. Two vikings carefully picked their way around any unstable patches of earth, evading the few remaining dragons. After a few minutes of adroit footwork and a lot of luck, they stood on firm ground. The vikings crept around the island, searching. Eventually, they advanced on the large rocky spire in the middle of the island, a spire so large it made up more of the island than the surrounding grasslands. As they approached, several dark entrances into the rock became immediately visible. The caves were searched quickly but thoroughly, both vikings on the alert for any sign of a returning dragon.

The sun had shifted noticeably in the sky by the time the vikings left the island for their makeshift raft, hard, grim expressions on their faces, and carrying an unconscious blob of bloodied flesh between them with one or two scales still thinly attached to it, their natural yellow almost completely obscured by glistening red.

Jiod felt his body tense up again, and groaned. _This isn't going to help…_ he thought. The dragon failed to respond, only sending Jiod a feeling of disagreement. Jiod sighed at the dragon, making it as loud as he could, and once more had the now familiar sensation of his limbs being moved without his consent. The gorge had walls that looked low, but were just high and crumbly enough to bring any climber down in a shower of rubble and dust, causing them to sneeze, which Jiod hadn't known dragons, or silarions, or whatever they were called, could do.

 _Fine. I'll wait for the viking,_ the dragon said to Jiod, for the first time communicating in Norse instead of images, sensations, and ideas. Jiod was left momentarily unable to respond. Consciously he was aware that dragons like Nero were intelligent, but his viking upbringing had taught him they were only dumb brutes, pests to be eliminated like large, dangerous flies. Jiod instinctively tried to rationalize his way out, Nero had once mentioned that some silarions were corrupted eggs of sentient dragons, maybe night furies were these eggs, hatched. But Jiod was a viking, and vikings were not good at rationalizing things.

 _That… that's great,_ Jiod sent distractedly, mind in turmoil. Then the spontaneous decision making crucial in battle kicked into gear, and Jiod settled on a conclusion. This dragon, at least, was sentient, like Nero. That meant… _What's your_ _name?_ Jiod asked. _I can't just call you dragon._

 _Call me dragon,_ the dragon told Jiod. Then, before Jiod could formulate a reply, _The viking's back._ The dragon had somehow detected the boy before Jiod, even though they were in the same body. _Pay attention,_ he said to Jiod, and sent Jiod a sharp buzzing sound, the equivalent of a slap. The dragon hides behind a rock, waiting. Soon after, the boy drops down into the cove through a narrow crevice too small for a dragon.

"Well, this was stupid," he muttered.

 _It's a trap! He has a weapon,_ the dragon says, close to panic. _No, wait, how do you know—_ Jiod started to ask, but the dragon had ceased to listen by this point, and threw himself madly against the walls once more. _Ow… please… stop… that_ hurt _,_ Jiod thought after a particularly bad landing. Jiod wrested control of his head from the dragon, and looked toward the viking, who hadn't moved except to take out a journal. The dragon gave off a slightly assuaged feeling, but attempted to escape one more time, and falling.

 _I was hungry, anyway,_ the dragon said, marched to the pool of water, and snapped at a few unwary fish which still managed to evade his jaws. Miffed, he curled up beside the pond, glaring at foliage he thought were looking judgemental. A clattering sound reaches his ears, and the dragon looks up at the boy directly for the first time, exchanging a stare. _If he says one thing about the fish…_

 _See? He's giving you fish!_ Jiod said, thoroughly exasperated. The dragon growled, too low for the viking to hear. The viking then decided for some reason that it would be a good idea to fully enter the cove, looking around. The dragon sneaked around behind him and snorted. _Fish? Really? I can catch my_ own _fish!_

The viking picked up the fish and held it up. C _learly an offering,_ Jiod thought.

 _No it's not, he has a weapon!_ the dragon refuted, looking at the now exposed dagger at his waist.

 _Seriously? That's not even a…_ Jiod's thoughts fell silent as the viking picked up the dagger and threw it off to the side. The dragon made them growl again, and the viking hooked his foot under the dagger and tossed it into the pond. The dragon then approached the viking, eyeing the fish with no small amount of hunger.

 _Are you thinking what I can hear you thinking?_ Jiod demanded, and got no response. _It's weird enough being in your head, don't make me eat raw fish._

 _Too bad,_ the dragon told him vindictively, and opened its jaws wide. Jiod desperately took control of their mouth, holding it open for a few seconds…

"Huh. Toothless. I could've sworn you had..."

 _No. No no no, I'm out,_ Jiod thought, and for a second the sheer force of his revulsion seemed to push him out of the dragon's body… then he was floating above them, dragon and viking, but the scene was growing dimmer…

"Teeth..."

And then he was back to lying in the circle of grass, crystal in the middle, and void all around.

And the voice. Tonelessly, it seemed to emanate from inside Jiod's very skull. "Congratulations. You passed. Unfortunately, I'm all out of juice. You'll have to find another way to fix the rest."

"Wait, what?" Jiod said, feeling that was all he could say. The voice wasn't making sense, which was probably because he was having a hallucination or a dream right now, and his body felt like it had been trampled on by a gronkle.

"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," the voice explained, "Berk was supposed to have its own silarion training thing going on, slowly bringing the other tribes around to the idea, and the archipelago was supposed to stay isolated from other cultures for at least another century. You're going to fix it." The way it was explained, completely matter of factly and without a shade of emotion, got to Jiod the way nothing else would. He flopped onto his side, facing the crystal.

"Bloody time travelling crystal," he said, and prodded it with a finger. "I can't time travel."

"There are ways… a silarion king could probably pull it off, and they live in the archipelago.

Before Jiod could question the sanity of the suggestion, his vision went dark again. What seemed to him a moment later, he became aware of a smell… he sniffed deeply, and felt the urge to retch. The stench of blood and rotting meat assaulted him. The odour was so harsh that even his tongue could taste the metallic tang of blood. Jiod flicked his eyes opened and sat up woozily. He stared about, squinting. His sight had been so much better as a dragon, and forms blurred and blended together until they finally resolved into a nonsensical image that Jiod supposed was just another layer of his hallucination.

"Nero. And silarions. And you're not attacking each other. Well, this is pleasant, see you when I wake up, I hope," Jiod said, and let his back give out, collapsing onto the ground again. He felt a profound exhaustion take him, and the last sensation he had before blacking out once again was of flying…

* * *

 **Short chapter, I know. Sorry 'bout that. Also, sorry for not updating yesterday. Thanks for reading. I see you 4, lurking. :)**


	26. Chapter 26

**Lead dark along…**

* * *

Nero placed Jiod in the very corner of his cave, covered with prickly branches and broad leaves from one of the few trees on the island. He had set the crystal in another corner. Nero hadn't yet had any success in pairing with the crystal, but the few facts he knew about such artefacts had blended with myth and legend. He was sure that crystals were supposed to glow when in a pairing, however, and it was quite lifeless. If he hadn't physically felt the thing repel him, he might even have thought it just an ordinary jewel, and eaten it for a little magic to accelerate his healing. After some experimenting, he decided it was too risky to tinker with, and resolved to wait until Jiod revived, for Jiod may have gleaned some insight into its use.

A heavy tread interrupted Nero's contemplation, and he looked with veiled resentment as Drago thumped into the cave. He'd filled out since the first time Nero had seen him. While Drago had at first had trouble merely wearing his heavy, macabre dragonskin cloak, he now wore it as if it were weightless. "I have instructed the other dragons to collect and fetch any gold from the army. We will need you to break catapult and arrow fire on our next… mission," he said, and then after a short delay gave an obligatory laugh.

"Is this really necessary?" Nero asked helplessly. If he killed Drago near any silarion, the whole pack would most likely attack at once, and he did not think the benefit in killing Drago would outweigh the loss of a dragon's life, which could last so long and do so much good.

A short pause. Drago appeared to be actually considering his answer; perhaps there was yet hope. His next statement dashed it. "I don't care. Dragons of your kind are monsters for what they do to other dragons, humans are monsters for what they do to each other, and the rest of the dragons are like a plague of locusts. All deserve to die, and will most likely kill themselves, eventually. I'm just... speeding up the process."

"That's not—"

"Enough. You will live, for helping right the wrong that is our existence," Drago said, and stomped out of the cave.

§

Nero returned from scouting to find Jiod awake and confusedly brushing itchy twigs out of his hair. "N-Nero? I thought you left?" Jiod said, eyes clouded with conflicting emotions.

"No, I was attacked," Nero said, walking over to Jiod and checking him over for injuries, only finding some bruising and shallow cuts, "but that's not important now. We need to get rid of a madman, he is somehow directing a large swarm of silarions that obey commands, and his eventual goal is to kill off all humans, dragons, and silarions."

"It said I was to fix everything..." Jiod muttered.

"What?" Nero asked, startled. "Who told you that?" Jiod mutely pointed to the crystal, empty of light in its corner of the cave. Nero would have thought Jiod wouldn't be able to see it with human eyesight, then on reflection realized that he had paired with the thing. Maybe he was still paired with it, in some small way that prevented others from doing so as well.

"You mean… it's a knowledge stone?" Nero asked, wonderingly. Such things had passed into legend even while the artefacts used as weapons were widespread.

"Uh… I don't know, they just gave it to me as a trial… wait, where are they? And how did you find me?" Jiod asked, falling down again after another attempt at standing up. He settled for raising himself up on his hands and knees, and looked around at the cave. It was dark, cool, and still, but not damp. Nero would never let any cave he inhabited become damp, no matter how much some dragons liked it.

Nero sighed, and spoke, "The human army was found by Drago—the one controlling the silarions—and… well, it's better you don't know the details. Suffice to say that—" Nero abruptly stopped speaking, and flicked his head sideways toward the entrance. "Silarions coming. Hide," he said, then, "quickly, quickly," causing Jiod to burrow wildly into the pile of vegetation.

Jiod hid himself not a moment too soon, as the flutter of wings entered his hearing just as he settled himself. A silarion dropped down on the cave floor, a weak stream of sunlight entering from behind it and turning the monstrous nightmare into a black silhouette. Jiod felt a moment of panic as it advanced, seeming to turn its head in his direction—how could he have forgotten their sense of smell?—then calmed as he realized the vegetation had a thick, cloying odour to it, filling his nose and blocking everything else. Trust Nero to solve the problem by bringing in stuff that smelled nauseating. Now that Jiod was aware of it, his stomach began to rebel, and he felt he might throw up if forced to hide for too much longer. He tried to distract himself by studying the silarion, but it was still nought but a shadow in the gloom. It crawled along the floor towards Nero in the odd semblance of walking that the species had—dragging itself along by the claws on its wings and stalking forward using its back, and only, legs—and something rolled off its tongue and clattered against the floor, nearly causing Jiod to start. Nero took the object in a claw and nodded to the silarion, which backed away and flung itself out of the cave and into the air, beating steadily until it was a speck in the distance.

After watching for some time, Nero took a long breath, a rumbling sound which Jiod felt even where he lay on the floor. "It's safe to come out now, the only silarions left on the island are a few sentries," Nero said, rolling the object between his talons. "At least the raid wasn't a complete waste. I'm extremely low on magic, soon I wouldn't even be able to fly," he added. Nero tilted his head back, opened his jaws wide, and tossed the object into his gullet. It glinted briefly as it passed a thin ray of light, then Nero snapped his jaws shut and it was gone. Then he gave what passed for a frown on dragons, and twitched back into stillness, moving his head in small jerks. He caught a flow of speech, and with some attention finally brought it into focus—

"I toldja, it brang someone with it! C'mon, you saw it leave too," said a male voice, wheedling and laced with a curious grimness.

"No. Remember Lillian?" someone else said, darkly and with no little venom.

"But it's a person, and it was just carried here!" the first one said urgently. "He could be wounded right now, missing a leg or something, and only us who can save him."

"Well—"

"Come on, hurry!"

The sound of someone clambering up the mountain was heard even by Jiod, who jolted upright out of his pile, brushing pieces of leaves out of his hair with his fingers, and took several deep breaths, before turning to Nero with an expression that clearly said, _What do we do?_

Nero pointed a talon at the vegetation again. Jiod shook his head in wordless protest, and took his axe off of its position across his back. Nero momentarily wondered how it had stayed there with all the jolts he'd received while being flown, then took a position beside the entrance, invisible to any who might look in. If they were bait laid by Drago… Nero angled his neck in an S shape and crouched into a stalking position, claws ready to tear and the liquid that would ignite into a furious funnel of fire collecting in a pouch in the roof of his mouth.

The scrabbling of hands and feet digging into stone stopped, and then an arm appeared over the lip of the cavern. A head poked over next, crowned with a horned helmet, and then with a mighty heave the entire body spilled onto the floor. The man's face, like everything else in the cavern, was a mystery to Jiod from his position back in the pile of plants. The man looked around, missed Nero completely, but seemed to see Jiod… Jiod squirmed a bit, then with horror realized his leg was exposed. _Maybe he didn't see it…_ Jiod thought, sure that he did.

Another scrabbling of limbs on rock could be heard outside, and the man turned and pulled up another viking. "There's somethin' in that corner," he told her, pointing at Jiod's hiding place. Jiod, meanwhile, was unsure whether to reveal himself or continue to hide. They were vikings, after all.

They started towards him. Nero burst out of his hiding place with a low growl, and they froze in place. Then one of them whispered, or at least, tried too; it was loud enough that even Jiod could hear it.

"Aim for the—" she said.

"I see it."

The two readied themselves, pointing makeshift spears at Nero. They appeared to be tree limbs topped with dragon fangs, and although they looked sharp enough, Jiod didn't think they stood a chance against Nero, who at that moment let out a brief snort. A small flame licked out of his jaws like a second tongue, for a moment painting the cavern with an unnaturally bright light. The cool floor of the cavern seemed to heat up just by its appearance, and the air grew hot and dry. Then it was gone, but it was enough—Jiod saw their faces.

"Ikhelt? Freva?" Jiod said incredulously. Nero had said everyone except himself and Jiod had been eaten by the Red Death, former queen of Drago's silarion swarm.

"Jiod?" Ikhelt said, burgeoning fight forgotten as he looked around, and finally spotted Jiod rising, coughing repeatedly and feeling wretched from the nauseating fumes.

"You know these people?" Nero asked.

All was silent, for a time, everyone being too confused to speak. Then Jiod cleared his throat and stood between vikings and dragon. "Nero, meet Ikhelt and Freva. Ikhelt, Freva, meet Nero."

Everything after that was a confused mess of words and noises, everyone cutting each other off, and demands for clarity on one point or another. The conversation, leaving that out, went something like this:

"Yeah, we escaped from the dragons," Ikhelt said offhandedly, neglecting to mention how.

"Silarions!" Nero rumbled.

"Then we were caught again," said Freva.

"Then we jabbed the dragon—" Ikhelt began.

"Silarion," Nero muttered.

"And it dropped us off here," Freva finished.

"We found some dragons being… tortured, and rescued them, but… they died of their wounds after," Ikhelt said solemnly.

"And that's pretty much it," Freva said.

That left Jiod trying to explain his journey, and experience with the crystal, whereupon even Nero joined in on interrupting. Then Nero had to explain his capture and 'rescue' by Drago.

§

Night had fallen, and the silarions were due to return at any minute. The plan was to kill Drago as soon as he entered Nero's cave, to check on his wound, as was his habit. Jiod's confused statement that the crystal said they needed to use a silarion king to reverse time was chalked up to a normal dream after the crystal had released him, and dismissed.

Soon, the massive storm of wings that signalled the silarion's return from a mission entered Nero's hearing. But instead of dispersing into tangled fragments of sound that meant they were dispersing and heading for their nests, the sound just came closer… and closer…

Nero's eyes widened with realization, and hurriedly scooped the assembled humans up in his claws, ignoring their indignant cries to let them go, or else, and shot out of the cave with a speed he shouldn't have been able to travel with his wound. All around him a dome of silarions drew closer and closer, carefully closing the noose. How Drago had found out, Nero didn't care to guess, as dark magic had multitudes of unintended consequences for not just practitioners, but anyone who knew the details of how it worked.

Drago himself was sitting on a monstrous nightmare, looking straight at them with a twisted grin on his face. Nero flew towards the nearest advancing wall of silarions, and bowled through them, sending them spinning this way and that, screeching. He then gathered himself and accelerated at a speed impossible for any dragon he'd seen in Drago's swarm to keep up with. Nero took a quick look back, and saw Drago, still with that insane grin on his face, eyes cold and expressionless. With a shudder, he jerked his head back forward and viciously beat his wings against the cold, heavily fogged air.

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 **Forgot to mention, I'm using a new paragraphing style, like in books. Also, recently reached the 1,000 view count! Yay! Edit: removes tabs. :(**


	27. Chapter 27

**Your mind's gone wrong…**

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"Are you sure there's no such think as a silarion king?" Jiod asked, having to shout to be heard, as the entire world seemed blanketed in a thick, grey fog which caught in the throat and caused periodic coughing fits, as well as serving as a muffler for any sound except the quietest ones, which were magnified and distorted until even the sound of a buckle shifting sounded like a deranged, echoing roar.

"Never heard of one, and I've been fighting silarions for your entire written history, which, by the way, is mostly wrong," Nero said, wings beating rapidly against the thick, clogged air.

"Well, you think silarions are all evil, and I had one as a sort of pet, once," Jiod said. Unbelievably, the fog seemed to have gotten thicker, stinging the eyes of Nero's human passengers. Jiod vividly recalled Berk, where the fog had not diminished a whit, even weeks after the queen had been killed… by her own silarions, after a human turned them against her. A human… who, although Jiod had only caught a glimpse of either, bore a resemblance to Drago… a resemblance he'd never have noticed if he hadn't thoroughly examined the young Viking who'd entered the cover where Jiod lie in a dragon's mind, bringing no back up, and even throwing away his weapon. If—Jiod's mind battled with accepting that it was even possible, but—if they were all three the same person… what had happened? Supposing the crystal had actually told him to go back in time, and it wasn't just a dream—which, Jiod was privately convinced it wasn't—was that the event he was supposed to undo? Then, in another leap of logical faith, suppose an entire village, lived in since birth, was obliterated by silarions… and the situation was Berk's destruction.

"And what happened to it? Joined Drago's swarms, perhaps?" Nero said, disrupting Jiod's thought process.

Jiod frowned, and said, "Uh… what? Oh, yes um, Holly, I don't know, remember the one you thought was a pet when you captured us on your weird ship island thing? Haven't seen her since."

"That wasn't a silarion," Nero said, a little uncertainly.

"Yes, that's what we call a deadly nadder, quite common with the rest of the silarions. Also, gronckles, I remember you asked me what they were," Jiod said. "Wait a second, you've been fighting silarions so long and you don't know of two of the most common types? How d'you know there isn't a king, then?"

Nero muttered something about real silarions.

"We've legends of huge dragons, bigger 'n mountains, and there's not all of them that are queens," Freva interjected unexpectedly, breaking off her muttered conversation with her brother.

" _Silarions_. Not dragons. _Silarions_ ," Nero said.

"See?" Jiod said, then, quickly, "The crystal showed me that Drago used to live on Berk, and we have to undo the destruction of Berk to fix everything. Oh, and Berk was destroyed because of the queen." Well, he figured it was probably right. Even if it wasn't, at least they had direction now, unlike before, and chief Adon had always said that making a bad choice was better than not making a choice at all.

The soft beats of Nero's wings against the thick fog became overpowering in the silence Jiod's statement generated. Freva and Ikhelt just stared at him, and even Nero tilted his head in such a way as to be able to look askance at Jiod with one eye while still keeping the other pointed forwards.

"Um… you maybe should've said something earlier, yeah?" Ikhelt finally said.

"I forgot," Jiod said, "had other things on my mind, and couldn't remember much anyway."

"But—"

"I. Forgot."

Nero snorted, and they moved steadily onwards, deeper into the fog.

"What are the chances we just happen to run into a dra- _silarion_ king?" Ikhelt addressed the air in front of him.

"Pretty bad, I'd say. We're near a location I know pretty well," Nero said. No one questioned how he could navigate in the fog, after all, the nest, or old nest, had been constantly shrouded in thick fog alike to what they were flying through now, and silarions navigated to and from it with ease. "No silarions where we're going," Nero added with an air of satisfaction.

The fog lightened by imperceptible degrees. First ears stopped tearing up, then the fog lost its abrasive quality against the throat. Then, suddenly, they were out, and it seemed to retreat behind them until there was no sign of it in sight.

Nero made a sound of extreme confusion, blinking and looking around in a daze. "We seem to have… teleported," he said.

Now that the fog was gone, the sea was visible below them, set aglitter by the cold brilliance of the setting sun. Ice floes drifted atop the water like warships, cutting through any waves with ease, implacable in their endless routes. A few islands stood out against the desolate landscape, frozen completely over so as to look like enormous hunks of ice. Multitudes of silarions swirled around one of the islands, diving and wheeling in complex aerial manoeuvres.

Even as they watched, a neat formation of silarions detached from the swarm and darted towards Nero. His passengers hugged his talons, not willing to risk being dropped if he was attacked.

The silarions darted around Nero in a blink. They were a breed only Nero and Jiod had seen before; night furies. Their multicoloured scales flashed as they darted about, spewing their signature plasma bolts all over the sky like flares. Then, without discernible reason, they returned to a formation surrounding Nero in an airborne cage of dragon, but this time of a type able to keep pace with him, and do serious damage with their fire alone. A bright red night fury nudged Nero towards the island, then returned to formation, which began to move. Nero, after a brief hesitation, went with it.

§

The home of this particular tribe of silarions was amazing. There was no other word for it. Despite being inside a giant enclosure of ice, everything was evenly lit, presumably by various unobstrusive holes opened to the outside. A huge lake, devoid of any hint of ice, dominated the middle of the island. Spires of mossy rock extended randomly from the edge of the lake, filled with roosting silarions. The entire thing was rimmed by a short cliff with a combination of tangled vegetation and chunks of ice covering it. At the edge of said cliff, the air became noticeably warmer.

"So… is there a king here?" Jiod asked, leaning as close to the edge of the cliff as he could to both get a closer view of all the silarions and and for the warmth.

"Our chances were pretty bad, huh?" Ikhelt said with a smirk.

"Shut up," Nero said, curled around on himself with tail and limbs dangling over the edge.

The few night furies still accompanying them screeched and flew off in a storm of wing beats, leaving the visitors alone.

"The lake's bubbling," Freva said, pointing, then went back to alternatively studying and licking the icy wall.

Everyone faced the lake, and saw that it was indeed bubbling. Within another moment, a head emerged, shaking to rid the water from its frill. Then it shot up… and up… until its entire length was revealed. Nero dwarfed most silarions by a considerable measure, but even Nero looked like a fly compared to the enormous silarion that was now standing, watching.

"Can silarion kings speak?" Jiod whispered to Nero.

"Yes," the silarion king said, but not in words, instead using the same method as the dragons and making an assortment of sounds that sounded nothing like Norse, yet still translated themselves into the language Jiod thought about them.

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 **Apparently I should have been capitalizing Viking the whole time... well, if you see it capitalized in earlier chapters, I edited it.**

 **Viewer base has grown to six readers! Let happiness reign!**


	28. Chapter 28

**You sing your song…**

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"Why have you led another nest to us?" the king asked. He didn't seem angry, but Nero knew it was quite easy to hide emotions in dragonspeak.

"We haven't led no nests to you. Actually, we just escaped one," Freva shouted. Even though she knew it had hearing acute enough to discern a hushed whisper from where they stood, common sense dictated that the king was far away, so she needed to shout to be heard.

The silarion king shifted forwards, causing five foot waves to suddenly erupt into existence, and blew a large misty cloud of ice shards at the group, causing the humans to flinch away, skin so cold it burned, and throats feeling full of shards of ice. Nero was the most affected, as the ice entered the gaping hole on his chest, coating the still healing wound with a frost that immediately crippled. "I do not suffer liars," the king said, ignoring Nero as he gave a soft gasp, jerked, then fell silent, formerly silver eyes dimmed to the deepest black.

"Bewilderbeast! That's what the legends call it," Ikhelt said, after he'd recovered from an intense fit of hacking and coughing, then, "Ey, Nero? Talking dragon? You alright there?"

Nero was silent and limp, completely unresponsive to any of Jiod's attempts to shift him.

"Hey! This is your fault, wake him up," Ikhelt complained. "Also, we didn't lie. We escaped. Duh."

The Bewilderbeast seemed taken aback by Ikhelt's flippant tone. "If you do not lie, then why is there a trace upon you, being followed by another's nest?"

Meanwhile, Jiod was pounding on Nero's chest, next to the wound. "What're you doing to him?" Ikhelt asked, turning away from the Bewilderbeast.

"It's supposed… to help… with… stopped breathing," Jiod said between punches. It didn't appear to be doing anything.

"If you want to stop him from breathing, attack that giant wound," Freva said, pointing at it.

Jiod looked at her aghast. "It's supposed to make him _start_ breathing again."

"Dunno about a trace, mister king. Maybe they're following us somehow," Ikhelt said, as the Bewilderbeast had looked for a second like he was about to lunge forward and start stabbing with his tusks. Kings didn't like being ignored.

"Fix him!" Jiod said, breaking off his pounding and pointing savagely at the Bewilderbeast. "You did it, undo it!"

The king eyed them doubtfully, then stood quite still. A few silarions flew from their roosts on the spires of rock and landed next to them, all Gronckles. The three of them arrayed themselves in a rough circle around Nero's body, and then one lit a fire inside of its mouth, bringing it close to Nero's wound. Ice started to thaw, and a shudder tore through the dragon's body. The light dimmed, and the first Gronckle stepped back, letting another lean forward and continue the process. After a few rounds of this, the Gronckles flew away, leaving Nero clearly sleeping, instead of unconscious.

The Bewilderbeast shook himself, opened his jaws, and then closed them. He stared at a section of the ice roof, slowly moving his head, then let out an ear shattering roar. The roosting silarions at once arose and swirled around the interior of the cave, roaring themselves. The Bewilderbeast lunged at a side of the huge cave, but before he could reach it a colossal section of the ceiling fell in and hit the king's head, shattering in two. The king gained a cross eyed look and swayed for a second, every silarion now silently watching. Then, with a tremendous splash, he fell sideways in the manner of a towering oak that had stood for centuries, only to be brought down by a freak lightning strike.

The moment the splash was heard, silarions streamed forth from the new opening, tangling with those who'd followed the king and shrieking battle cries. The king's silarions, in contrast, fought back in a grim, mechanical silence, not even breaking it to scream at receiving a death blow.

Nero opened his eyes somewhere during this conflict and looked about in confusion. Jiod stood next to him, frozen, mouth hanging half open. Ikhelt and Freva sat beside each other, looking at the spectacle while shifting and muttering.

Soon there were only a few silarions fighting back against the invaders. A loud groan echoed through the cavern, causing the silarions to stop fighting and hang in the air, beating their wings barely fast enough for a hover. The king then broke the water in a boom, waves touching the hovering dragons and even bringing some down into the depths to drown. Copious amounts of black blood flowed, staining the water, and bone shone white on the crown of his head. The fighting resumed in earnest, but the king's silarions now fought with unmatched ferocity, flying and attacking with torn wings and cracked scales, black blood streaming from uncountable wounds. The battle turned from a massacre into a nightmare in a second, silarions dropping like flies and then rising up again to fight with fatal wounds like zombies. The Bewilderbeast himself snapped up dozens of silarions in his jaws at a time. He was universally avoided by all silarions, as getting too close meant a violent death, even to his own subjects.

The Bewilderbeast's subjects fought viciously to their last breaths, but it wasn't enough. Too many had died before the Bewilderbeast roused himself from unconsciousness, and the tide of attackers slowly but surely eliminated their opponents, one by one, until only the king himself was left thrashing and snapping futilely at silarions who, with no distractions, now easily avoided him.

Another silarion entered, one known to vikings as a Monstrous Nightmare, bearing a human cloaked in dragonskin on its back. Drago silently raised his staff, then roared, a roar indistinguishable from a dragon's, and started whirling the hooked staff about himself like a child would a stick they believed would bring them aloft, if only they spun it fast enough.

All at once, every silarion in the cavern stopped evading the Bewilderbeast and turned to it, a slow, ominous motion. Hundreds of jaws opened, spilling fireballs so thickly that for a moment there was more fire in the cave than air, though curiously, dragonfire produces no smoke. The king roared in anguish and despair, charged the closest icy wall, and broke through, leaving Drago's silarions still spewing fire where he'd left.

Nero had been presumed to be just another casualty, and the humans hadn't even been spotted.

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 **Chapter for y'all. There are now 7 people who have read every chapter. Thanks guys!**

 **Just came back from the House of Torment. It's extremely fun, but has a long line to get in.**


	29. Chapter 29

**It is lifelong…**

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Jiod felt a soft buzzing settle over his thoughts, a special kind of numbness that protected his mind from immediately comprehending the sheer horror of what had just happened. Before, this had been a secluded place of natural wonder, home to an isolated colony of silarions living under the protection of a king. Now, the wake of ruin and destruction that followed Drago left a shatter husk of a haven, now a tomb to its former inhabitants. And Jiod couldn't help but feel that it was somehow his fault… after all, the king had said something about a trace, and Jiod knew all about tracking.

Nero stirred from his feigned death, stretching and yawning. Jiod winced as he heard a loud series of rapid fire cracks from Nero's incredibly flexible spine, and looked at his other companions as they emerged from behind Nero's bulk. They looked as shocked as Jiod felt, and Ikhelt looked like he'd lose anything he might have eaten. Now that he thought about it, Jiod didn't feel too great either. The silarion corpses were starting to burn from the inside, their fires devouring the bodies and releasing a smell of burning flesh that would forever linger in their tomb, despite how quickly their bodies decayed.

"Looks like you were right about one thing," Nero said, startling Jiod and nearly causing him to fall off the edge. Freva caught hold of his arm and pulled him back. Jiod gave a silent nod of thanks and turned back to Nero, who continued, "Silarion kings exist. How I've never seen one before, I can't imagine, but they do exist. Now we have to see if you were right about the other thing." Nero leapt into the air and scooped everyone up in his claws. Jiod merely sighed, used to this mode of transportation by now, but Freva and Ikhelt were both shouting at Nero to let them go; or something like that anyways. Their voices echoed and tangled with each other, creating an incomprehensible mess of noise that Nero ignored, talking even over the much louder noise of his flight. "Time to ask him to send us back in time!"

§

They quickly found the king beached on the shore of a nearby island, lying on his side and staining the sand and water black with his blood, which still flowed from his head in a powerful torrent. Ikhelt stumbled off muttering under his breath after Nero landed a short distance away from the mighty beast, cross about "being carried about like a sheep". Everyone else inched towards the Bewilderbeast, wary of a sudden turn that would accidentally crush them under his huge mass. Nero led the way, treading as lightly as he could before they reached his enormous head. Nero set himself down before a giant eye in one of the few places that wasn't a drenched in blood. Jiod and Freva perched themselves atop Nero's left arm, which he raised so they could have a good view.

"Hello? You awake?" Freva said, and leaned forward, as if to touch the eyelid. Before she could, it snapped open, sending her wheeling backwards, colliding with Jiod, and leaving them both teetering on the edge of Nero's arm. With a snort, Nero twitched them back onto somewhat solid footing.

"Go… away..." the Bewilderbeast said in two heavy breaths, the words thickly laden with sorrow.

"Um. We can stop everything that just happened from happening, according to a magic crystal thing. But we need to go back in time or something, so… can you help with that?" Jiod asked.

The Bewilderbeast blinked in… bewilderment. The rhythmic pulsing of blood from his head momentarily stopped, and the constant, low pitched roar of his breathing suddenly vanished. "What?" he said, finally, abandoning his statue like state.

"Can you send us back in time?" Jiod repeated. Nero shifted nervously, ready to fly at the smallest sign of the king's anger, but he seemed only weary.

"No," he said, crushing their hopes. Even Ikhelt seemed to sense that something was wrong from his non-blood spattered vantage point closer inland. "Who told you about that old rumour? I thought it was quite erased..."

"A crystal… just a stupid crystal," Jiod said. "Guess we'll just… find another way."

The Bewilderbeast gave a loud groaning sound, startling Jiod and Freva into jumping, and Nero into twitching his head to the side in one quick movement. "You have led another here. Your trace is active," he said, and rolled over in a long, slow motion. Nero quickly flapped his way to the king's other eye, which was closed. It cracked open for a moment, and the king said, "You desire my death; you can have it," and closed it again.

"No we don't! Can you get the trace of before they arrive?" Jiod asked urgently, scanning the skies. For his part, Nero groaned in dismayed comprehension, and said, "No, we can't. A magical trace can only be placed on one willing to accept it, and they can discard it at any time. We have a traitor amongst us."

Freva joined Jiod in looking for a multicoloured cloud of silarions, saying, "But only me and Ikhelt and you two are here. No one who could be a traitor."

Above them, on an area between forest and sand, Nero spotted Ikhelt waving his arms wildly above his head. Freva and Jiod followed the direction Nero was looking. "No," Freva said, softly. "No, he probably spotted them and's just tryin' to warn us. Yes, thassit, he's just—"

Freva abruptly cut off her stream of words with a choked gasp as a dragon about Nero's size landed next to Ikhelt, who immediately stopped waving about and began rapidly talking to it. The dragon itself had scales of a dark green colour, with a tracery of aqua filaments winding around its body in intricate patterns, thickest at the wing tips and snout. A quick glance in the party's direction revealed its eyes to be a bright, smouldering red. If it were dark, one could easily imagining ropes of flame snaking out and entangling living creatures, and the dragon revelling in their futile struggles.

"Why isn't he fighting? Why… why isn't he… why..." tears slowly rolled down Freva's face, leaving clean streaks in the general grime. Jiod was shocked; Viking's usually wouldn't cry even at the death of a loved one.

"Quick, Jiod. Give me the crystal," Nero said. Numbly, Jiod handed it over to Nero, who grasped it firmly in his claws. He hesitated for a moment at destroying such a rare and valuable artefact, but, as he had learned over and over again, sacrifices must be made, and nothing is forever. Without the loss of another moment, Nero opened his jaws and tossed the brightly gleaming jewel into his gullet. It looked like it would be too small for Nero to even notice, and as nothing happened for several seconds, Jiod began to fear it was too small, or had run out of energy, or something. His fears were shortly assuaged when Nero flew away from the inert Bewilderbeast at an impossible speed, but somehow not even the tiniest force of the wind reached his human passengers. Nero deposited Jiod and Freva on a smooth, firm stretch of dirt, and at a distance far enough from both the Bewilderbeast and Ikhelt and the other dragon that were either of them to suddenly lunge at them, the humans would have ample time to move. Nero started to leap away when Jiod spoke, Freva too shattered to do the same.

"Wait! In case… you don't make it, does… I mean, do your species have any weaknesses like Silarions do?" Jiod asked, remembering the popular saying, "Every dragon has a weakness. If you know it, you can fight it; if you don't, you're dead." Granted, they it was about silarions, but dragons did resemble silarions, not that Jiod would ever say that to Nero's face, or anywhere within a ten mile radius of him.

Nero paused, thinking. The true weakness of his species was not one he would expose lightly, or even heavily. He'd sooner die than reveal it to someone untrustworthy, and the weakness wasn't even one that could be used against a dragon in battle. However, even telling the Vikings a made up weakness would suffice. He had plenty of experience of what humans could do when they believed it was possible to win. Decided, Nero spoke, saying, "Our weakness… is our healing. Without magic, we cannot recover from wounds for an extremely long amount of time, and an exposed wound can become fatal from infection." Truth, although it wasn't the great weakness, since a dragon was rarely without magic, excepting Nero, and wounding one in the first place was a great task. But he could definitely do damage to the other dragon… "If I don't make it, cover your weapons in dirt and grime, make them as filthy as you can, and aim for any wounds I'll have made."

Jiod nodded and set to work, uprooting the few stray plants and moving rocks, then tearing up the dirt below them. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nero's old chest wound closing itself rapidly, then Nero was gone. Once he judged his axe sufficiently dirtied, and did the same to Freva's makeshift spear, he looked over to see how Nero was faring, and his jaw involuntarily dropped. It was only by long ingrained training and instinct that he his axe didn't do the same.

Nero and the green dragon were both surrounded in golden spheres of energy that caught the light and refracted it randomly and without reason, blinding the onlookers every one in a while. Nero and his opponent were currently ramming each other, and every hit left dark spots upon the golden globes, glimmering unpleasantly and obscuring vision of the dragon it protected. As soon as a spot turned black, it would shift away, actively avoiding the other dragon's approach. Within minutes, both dragons shields were nearly completely black with only a thin webbing of gold running throughout. As the dragons neared for another pass, their shields forced the remaining gold towards the other. They were but a fingers width apart when the green dragon suddenly twirled in mid air, its form seeming to ripple… and it was above Nero, bearing down on him… and the golden section of its shield pressed against the black of Nero's… and with a pop, Nero's shield disappeared. Nero quickly retaliated by bathing the green dragon in a thick stream of fire, popping its shield in return, but it was an inauspicious start for Nero.

With an air of ritual, the dragons separated until they were each perhaps a hundred feet apart. Nero hovered, still in the air as the other dragon stretched claws towards him, glowing a soft gold. Then, with a roar, the green dragon thrust a talon forward, and a golden bolt lanced forth. Nero still hovered in place, not moving as gold light met silver scales, splashing across him until he was fully enveloped. The glow shortly faded, and then appeared on Nero's claws in turn.

After a few dozen shots with no one getting anywhere, the dragons all at once began firing quickly as they could, spinning and dodging and raising short lived walls of golden energy. The green dragon's beams began to slow in speed first, then Nero's. It seemed they were almost evenly matched, as when the green ran out of shots, Nero only had a half dozen left. Then they darted towards each other, looking intent on ramming each other as before, but this time without shields. With load, defiant roars, the dragons crashed into each other, claws shredding scales and penetrating through skin, into muscle and on lucky strikes exposing bone.

The dragons pulled apart, black blood leaking from everywhere, no part seeming unscathed. They took a brief respite, which consisted on hovering while glaring into teach other's eyes, then shot forward once, twice, three times more, until they both collapsed to the sand uncomfortably close to the insensible Bewilderbeast, clawing and pummelling each other. A cloud of particles arose from the fight, rendering it invisible to the observers.

All of a sudden, only silence came from the cloud. Then a weak victory cry, which fell silent. Anxiously, Jiod waited for the dust to clear. Even Freva was roused from her shock, ready to run into the aftermath of the fight.

When the dust cleared, two forms too black with blood to distinguish were revealed. As they approached, one lifted its head and opened its eyes, which were a dull silver. Jiod and Freva gave huge sighs of relief, and concern, for Nero was literally covered in blood. As the outcome became apparent, Ikhelt gave a short cry from where he stood, and ran into the forest. Freva looked like she wanted to run after him, and whether it was to wring his neck or hug him, Jiod wasn't sure, but concern for Nero won out.

§

Nero perceived the humans he'd been protecting, alive and well. With an internal sigh, he closed his eyes once more and lay upon something, though whether it was ground or the other dragon he was unable to tell. Reality slipped away, and by degrees his hearing receded, smell became less sharp, and the little feeling he retained drifted away, leaving him drifting in an empty void. The darkness was warm and comforting. Nero tried to stretch out a talon to caress the darkness, only for it to weakly scratch against a hard, unyielding surface. With that, Nero realized where he was, and knew he had failed. If he concentrated, he could hear a heartbeat next to him. Frantically, Nero tried to recall all he knew, all his memories, clinging to them like a drowning man to a raft, but they were chased away all the sooner by his trying to retain them.

 _I am Nero. I earned this name. I am Nero. I am the saviour of humanity, the pillar of light hailed in olden times as the one to bring an age of prosperity. I am Nero. I am… I… Am…_

A newborn dragon hatched in a clutch of three others. For a moment, he thought something seemed… off. Then instincts took over, and he was feasting on something freshly killed, while a large blue dragon he knew as mother looked on, eyes and crest angled together in what he knew was a smile.

§

"No…" Jiod said, softly, laying a hand on Nero's snout, unflinching as he stroked clumps of gore and was coated in blood. "He's… dead. He's dead damnit!" Jiod cried, then slumped down, placing his slightly cleaner hand on his face with a moan. I _hadn't even really known Nero_ , he thought, but still felt sorrow thick in this throat. Dimly, he realized he felt worse about a dragon's death than he had about being exiled from his own tribe.

"It seems I have misjudged you," a deep voice rumbled from behind him. A quick glance backwards showed the Bewilderbeast stumbling unsteadily. Jiod didn't care.

"Very well… I assume the knowledge stone taught you how to fix all of… this," he continued, pawing at the ground. Jiod at first didn't realize the significance of his statement, then his eyes widened at the same moment that Freva gave a choked sort of gasp.

The Bewilderbeast suddenly took off running straight towards the ocean at a speed that seemed impossible for something of his size. When he was nearly in the water, a loud shattering sound, as of a million panes of glass being broken with mallets simultaneously, resounded, temporarily deafening Ikhelt and Freva. The Bewilderbeast rocked unsteadily, then collapsed. Then his body melted into a strange liquid mass, showing the scene of a quiet village in fast forward. The moon was in the sky, slowly but perceptibly moving, and the stars with it. The image panned down until it was right above a soft patch of grassland on a cliff right outside the village. Jiod and Freva took a silent look at each other, and stepped through the portal.

§

Some time later, another Viking emerged from the forest. After a hesitant look in every direction, he gained a grim set to his face, and steadily marched towards the portal until he disappeared into it.

His name was Ikhelt.

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	30. Chapter 30

**But when freedom's devoured…**

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A fog of grief dragged at Jiod with every step, every thought, seeking to smother his very being until he could do nothing but lie on the ground, whimpering. First an island disappearing off the face of the world, then being banished for no discernible reason, Ikhelt's betrayal, Nero's death, and the death of the silarion king and his entire tribe… all of it formed into a solid, crushing net, driving Jiod farther into despair every second.

Jiod walked without enthusiasm, head low. They'd heard masses of silarions calling out cheerfully to each other the moment they'd appeared in the strange forest, but there was no going back; no portal like the one they'd walked through to get here leading back, no strange rippling light in the sky, nothing. He'd convinced a leader, broken in both spirit and body, to kill himself, to bring Jiod and Freva to a place where the catastrophe had already occurred. Silarions reigned overhead, free. Why they hadn't attacked yet was a mystery Jiod couldn't muster the curiosity to contemplate. Jiod gave a sideways glance at Freva. She looked to be of the same mind. The tears had gone, and she'd resumed a demeanour Jiod would assume as normal if he'd not known her before, but there was no more of that slight spring in her step, that tiny bit of extra superfluous energy she would put into everything. The usual gleam in her eyes had hidden itself, and her face almost never changed—not in a grim or forbidding way, but one with a certain rigidity.

Jiod didn't even know where they walked. The village they had seen in the portal never appeared before them, and no clear paths or directions presented themselves. They walked listlessly, without purpose, constantly thinking. Jiod could have talked to the Bewilderbeast before he'd created the portal; they'd had time, certainly they would have been able to discover why it hadn't work, and maybe even fix it. Jiod could have inquired more closely after the mysterious trace the Bewilderbeast had sensed on them, and that everyone had simply chalked up to as an oddity that wasn't worth thinking about. Or Jiod could have helped Nero in his fight somehow. He could have thrown an axe, or shouted at a crucial moment, allowing Nero to get an advantage…

A startled yelp caused Jiod to look up from his reverie, and involuntarily make one of his own. The village shown in the portal stood, most definitely not on fire, sprawled uphill from them. The houses were crudely arranged, as if a child had haphazardly piled model houses in a sandbox and tossed them around randomly until they all stood upright, but somehow also looked as if they belonged in some fashion. This one looked like it had blended in with the side of a cliff, tilting at a crazy angle yet giving off an impression of infallible strength. That one stood out in the centre of everything else, not even trying to blend in, a great hall of great wealth and stability, yet it too looked as if it belonged, like an aloof wizard in his tower, radiating power, but still coming out to talk softly to children of times long gone and faraway places, a piece of permanence made so by its very incongruity.

But the village escaped Jiod's attentions entirely.

"Why are silarions sleeping in Berk's village?" Jiod said, voice deceptively calm. Freva didn't reply. Jiod rubbed his eyes. They'd been walking since night, and it was now a bright, early morning, which at the moment was giving Jiod a mild headache. He rubbed his eyes furiously, leaving spots of colour in his vision even after he opened them. The village was still there. With silarions piled everywhere, even on the roofs and in the streets of the village.

A loud curse got Jiod's attention next, and he swivelled his head towards the noise… and saw a bulky Viking youth, perhaps Jiod's age, kicking at a Monstrous Nightmare and shouting in its ears.

How could this happen? From what Jiod knew, Berk held a tribe determined to fight against dragons to the bitter end, no matter how easy and economical it would be to simply move to a farther island. So how… and then Jiod remembered something, something connected to a bright gem, an important gem. A memory of flying, of falling, of finding someone, a Viking… a Viking he, for some reason, automatically classified as enemy… Jiod frowned. It was strange for him to dream, in his memory he had never had one. He tried to remember it again, and then…

He remembered being a silarion. A Night Fury, like the one he'd killed, or the multicoloured ones that had escorted them back at the king's nest. And the boy he'd managed to make the other consciousness not kill… Maybe he'd trained the silarions?

As if on cue, another door flung open, and with a yawn, a young, strangely scrawny Viking emerged from another house. Jiod could remember him… but the peg leg was new. Then, another shock. The Viking left the shelter of his doorway, and almost immediately a dark shape he hadn't noticed sprung from above and tackled the boy. Jiod went for his axe, knowing it was too late—

And the most dangerous silarion Vikings had encountered, one of a type that they had only been able to kill except when already disabled by freak chance, that was, tellingly, taught of as the only thing a Viking was allowed to fear, to run from… that silarion started licking the Viking's face. And Jiod laughed, which had the unfortunate consequence of Freva cuffing him, hard, right of the side of his head.

"Ow!" Jiod said, slowly, and just as slowly raised a hand up to his head. "Why would you _do_ that?"

"Do you want them to see us?" Freva hissed.

"Um, maybe?" Jiod said, and Freva's expression turned into a glower. "But even if I did, its not like they can hear us from here," he finished.

And a Gronckle dropped from the tree nearest to Jiod and began buzzing about him like an overexcited dog.

"It's… probably a wild one?" Jiod said weakly, as Freva's glower roasted him at full force.

Then five more come out of the trees around them, forming a semi-circle with the only open part towards the village. Jiod got ready to tell Freva to dart out of the circle and go around the Gronckles back into the forest, but then the Gronckles started to herd them. They flew almost faster than the Vikings could run. Despite being the slowest type of silarion there was, they were still fast by human standards, and could easily beat any human in a race.

Jiod and Freva were finally deposited next to the Night Fury, who was now lying on the Viking's chest as he squirmed, trying futilely to get up. When the Night Fury saw the intruders, he immediately sprang up with a growl. The boy rose with a groan shortly after, and a grumbled "Come on Toothless, you _know_ that doesn't wash out."

Then stopped wringing his hands as if he was going to fling the spit on them at something, and simply stared. The staring didn't last long, though.

"And who might you be?" he asked, looking between Jiod and Freva.

* * *

 **Hello again. Sorry for not updating in... um... forever. I wish I could say I was busy with stuff, but the real reason I haven't updated in so long is simply procrastination. It goes like this:**

 **Fall asleep one day before writing chapter.**

 **It's okay, I still have tomorrow. I might even write _two_ chapters for missing one!**

 **It's tomorrow. What am I doing?**

 **Eh, just after I finish this thing...**

 **Oh no, it's another tomorrow.**

 **But if I write, they'll notice I didn't before...**

 **Maybe if I wait another day they'll forget...**


	31. Chapter 31

**The slaves they are empowered…**

* * *

Freva took the lead. "We are, being, ah, traders."

"But our ship was destroyed against rocks on an island somewhere," Jiod added, "so we had to make a raft out of the, um, pieces."

"...right," The Viking said, now tangled in the coils of an energetic Night Fury, who at one moment resembled an enormous snake, coiled around its prey, and the next an eager puppy, dancing around and nudging the Viking with his head. "I'm Hiccup. My d—I mean, the chief should probably meet you two, he always has to sanction traders before we let them… trade," Hiccup trailed off, then extended a hand. It was looked at with some confusion. Hiccup then laughed and brought up his other hand, but Freva and Jiod became confused as to which one was theirs to shake, and ended up twisting Hiccup's pretzel-thin arms into also resembling a pretzel's shape. After an awkward sort of greeting in which they each gave their names again, they sprang apart again, each relieved to not have to continue to trying to figure out… whatever that was.

"And this is Toothless," Hiccup said, and grandly gestured towards the Night Fury, who promptly stopped his antics and assumed a regal pose, of which the effect was spoiled by Toothless sticking his tongue out and making pleased rumbling purrs. Amused, Jiod bent in a slight bow as he'd seen chief Adon do on occasion while meeting with another chief or political figure, and Freva mimicked it after a short pause. Toothless seemed quite pleased with the attention, and stood up on his haunches, looking for all the world like he was sitting on something, then bent over at the middle, head lowering down to the level of the Vikings. "Wow. He must really like you. He's never bowed to anyone else before," Hiccup said, then, teasingly, "how about a bow to me then, eh bud?" Toothless only snorted and fell back into his normal four-legged stance, then began prancing around Hiccup again. "One day, you're going to regret never bowing to me," Hiccup said with a good-natured shake of his head towards the Night Fury. "Anyway, stay here for a bit, alright? I'll get the chief out to speak with you." Hiccup disappeared into the house he'd come from.

"So… what happened?" Freva said. Jiod didn't need to ask what she meant.

"I don't know. This is… weird. From what I'd known of them, Berkians were some of the best and most determined dragon fighters, a part of the archipelago's shield." Jiod absent mindedly made the mistake of trying to pet Toothless, who hissed and snapped at his fingers with unbelievable speed, open jaws where scaled back had been before Jiod could comprehend the movement. "Oookay," Jiod said, and snatched his hand away from the Night Fury, who immediately cuddled against Jiod's legs, rubbing against him like a cat.

"Yeah, we… um, knew about them too. They made the cleanest kills, which produced the best quality dragonskin cloaks… been a dream to get one of 'em," Freva said, in a tone quite the opposite of what was normally used on the subject.

"What…? Oh, uh, yeah… so we could be on Berk or… wow, did you hear that?" Jiod said, quite distracted by the way the Night Fury, who'd been curling around him like a large cat, had just rumble-purred loudly.

"Focus, Jiod," Freva said, snapping her fingers close to his face, but not close enough to risk irritating the Night Fury, whos eyes had narrowed to sideways slitted pupils at her voice.

"Ah, right. Anyways, the portal could have just teleported us to a random place that adopts silarions," Jiod said, watching in fascination as the village slowly woke up, Vikings with abnormally large versions of every type of weapon under the sun, and a few that aren't, jumped aboard a silarion, or walked down to the docks. Few paid any attention to the visitors. "...but I'd have to say I'm pretty sure this is Berk, or at least a place like Berk," Jiod said, and Freva had to agree; even her tribe didn't have the sheer variety or quality of weapons apparent in a mere glance from a distance, and her tribe was formed mostly of assassins.

"So… we're probably… in the wrong time," Jiod said slowly, feeling the words out as he said them.

"Future or past?" Freva said, glaring at the Night Fury. Toothless glared back at her from his position around Jiod, and both Toothless and Freva gave each other death stares.

"Um… I'd say future, since we don't… know about… um," Jiod said. Freva didn't appear to be paying attention, as she was still locked in eye contact with the Night Fury.

"Go on," she said.

"Sure…" Jiod said. They had both gone quite still, except for the eyes, which were slowly narrowing, leaving both squinting. "Well, I'd say this is the future, because we know the past Berk was very fond of…" Jiod made a quick cutting gesture over his throat, unwilling to find out if Toothless could actually understand him, and if he could how he would respond.

"Then… did we fix everything?" Freva said, finally looking away from the Night Fury to look at Jiod, and pretending it was because she chose to look away. Toothless wasn't fooled, and uncurled from around Jiod to prance around in front of the house Hiccup had come from.

"I don't—" Jiod began, and then the door to Hiccup's house opened again, and out marched a mountain. On closer observation, Jiod decided he wasn't actually a mountain, but definitely at least part giant. The Berkian chief loomed over everyone else, even, somehow, the silarions, despite the fact that they should have been towering over him. He was a mountain of muscle, the power of a thunderstorm contained in a body too small to hold it forever, and bound to eventually explode in a spectacular fashion.

"I've heard ya've lost yer ship. It's a shame, we coulda done with more material right around now," the chief said, practised expression saying _peace, friends, agreements,_ but eyes hinting at _suspicion, strangers, threats._

"Yes…" Jiod said.

Freva impatiently elbowed Jiod aside and spoke to the chief with purpose. "We'll be happy to work here some, 'til we can get enough money to get someone and take us off the island," she said.

Jiod could only helplessly agree and hope she had a plan.

She didn't.

"We gotta stay as long as we can. A portal might open again, or something else," Freva said, crossing her arms, "We gotta have reasons to stay, not just wanting. An' I'd like to seeya come up with somethin' half better."

So he went with it, and they tried to find a job.

* * *

 **Here is thing. I finishes thing at 3:47 AM. Does I get treats?**


	32. Chapter 32

**You rolled the dice…**

* * *

"You get to have a silarion. I should have one too." Jiod said mulishly, and crossed his arms.

"Then join the defence patrol," Freva said.

Jiod kicked at the floor of the arena and winced. It was made of solid rock. "They wanted to see my 'qualifications' and told me there aren't enough dragons to spare when I said I didn't know what they meant by that."

"Really? There's, like, hundreds just sitting around," Freva said.

"Not making me feel any better..."

"Oh, is that what I was doing?" Freva said.

Jiod glared at her, then sighed. "I'm going to show them that I can have a silarion."

"Yeah, why else would you be here this early?" she said, sweeping her arms around as if to encompass the entire training arena. "And by the way, they're called dragons here."

"I _know_ that," Jiod said, exasperated, "but they're _not_."

Before Freva could respond, the reinforced gates opened, admitting Hiccup and his Night Fury, Toothless. From what Jiod could tell, they were the leaders of the silarion riders.

"Alright, you're here, good…" Hiccup said to Freva, then faced Jiod. "But why are you here?"

"Because I can learn how to ride a, um, dragon, as well as anyone else!" Jiod said.

Toothless gave a rumble-purr and hop walked over to Jiod, nuzzling his legs, then encircled him and stopped moving.

"Really bud?" Hiccup said. He went up to Toothless and tugged an ear. The ear slapped him. "Alright, he can try!" Toothless immediately jumped up and went back to Hiccup's side. "I would've said yes anyway, you know," he said, scratching at Toothless's side. Toothless just gave him a contented purr. Jiod blinked.

"Well, I was going to fly Freva here out on Toothless," Hiccup said, and pointed up at the sky. There was still some severed grating visible at the top of the arena's walls where it had been torn down at some point in the past. "but it looks like we have an extra passenger, so Toothless will just have to carry you in his paws," he continued.

Jiod looked at Toothless and gulped. The Night Fury was a very compact silarion, but didn't look like he could comfortably carry three passengers on his back. Toothless rolled over on his back and stuck out his tongue. Jiod felt even less like entrusting his life to him, but didn't ask to walk or to be taken on another trip. It was probably a test to see if he was really willing to be part of Berk's defence patrol. Jiod nodded silently to Hiccup, who raised an eyebrow.

Toothless could evidently sense when Hiccup wanted to ride him, because he immediately nudged Hiccup in one smooth motion that hurled him on top of Toothless's back. Hiccup must have been used to being thrown about in such a way, because he took it in stride and started snapping things in place. "All aboard!" Hiccup said, looking at Jiod with, in Jiod's opinion, an extremely malevolent smile.

Freva hopped on behind Hiccup and started strapping things on, while Jiod walked up to Toothless's head, feeling like he was walking to his execution. "So do I just—" Jiod started to ask, before Toothless reared up on his hind legs and plucked Jiod from the ground and launched himself into the sky. Jiod clung to Toothless's forelegs with desperate strength, too busy clinging to scream.

"Wooooohooo!" a despicably cheerful Freva said from Toothless's back. Jiod glared at Toothless's stomach as if his sight could bore through it, find Freva, and cause severe burns.

Then Toothless accelerated. And that's when Jiod screamed, a continuous "AAAAAAAH." And Toothless flew even faster. Eventually. Jiod stopped screaming, and just watched the colours blend together as he dangled limply from Toothless's grip. Suddenly, there was a solid blur of colour under his legs. It whirled together in spirally streams, and Jiod fell down with eyes crossed. "I'ma just be zzzuhgh," he said, and then stopped trying to talk.

"Looks like he'll be out of it for a while," Hiccup said, somewhere over where Jiod law sprawled. "No, he'll be fine… eventually," Hiccup continued in response to a question Jiod didn't hear. Soon everyone moved off to do… something. After an interminable time, Jiod gradually regained his senses.

"Werramai?" he said, dazed after raising his head off the ground to look around. He saw tan rocks stretching out until they hit tan rock towers, which seemed resembled many flattish stones piled atop each other and then welded together. Jiod turned his head again. After the flash of nausea went away, he saw… silarions. Everywhere. There must have been a dozen of them, chirping, bouncing around, and just… playing. Toothless was among them, bouncing up and down while facing a Nadder, who was doing the same. All of a sudden, they flattened themselves to the ground, then Toothless jumped up first and darted towards the Nadder, who bolted away. An epic game of chase ensued, featuring much jumping, flying, and hiding. The two would reverse roles at random moments, and the rules seemed to change as well, with more silarions joining, until the whole area was a tangle of silarions alternately chasing and running away from each other. Jiod groaned; the sight was giving him a headache.

"Finally awake?" Freva said from the side Jiod was not looking at. He refused to roll over and face her. "Well, it was going to be your chance, but since you don't care..."

Jiod was standing in the space of a second, only slightly wobbling. Freva grinned. "Thought that'd get your attention," she said, then whistled. Jiod winced at the noise. Hiccup and Toothless emerged from the pile of silarions, Toothless looking inordinately pleased with himself and Hiccup wearing an expression both irritated and amused.

"None of them are an appropriate match for Freva, so we'll have to look in a larger cluster to find one. Now let's see if any are a match for you," Hiccup said. Jiod looked at the swarming mass of silarions doubtfully. "Go on, make friends," Hiccup urged.

Jiod hesitantly stepped towards the mass of silarions. "Hey… _hey_ , can I just… Hold _still_ ," Jiod said, trying to find a silarion that would stop moving. Hiccup made a low whistle-roar sound and suddenly the silarions were arranged in a circle facing Jiod. "Unfair..." Jiod muttered. He tried to place a hand on one of their snouts like he'd seen Hiccup do with Toothless, who would close his eyes and purr until he took his hand off. The silarion he'd reached towards—a Terrible Terror—squawked and backed away with startling speed. Jiod was left with his hand outstretched, feeling terribly foolish. He lowered it sheepishly.

"Is that it? Giving up now?" Freva yelled tauntingly from outside the silarion circle. Her voice held a harsher edge than it had when they'd first met, sounding as if she somewhat meant it.

"Course not! Just, um, testing," Jiod said, slowly edging towards another silarion, this one a two-headed Hideous Zippleback. "Hey there, I'm Jiod. And who are you… uh, bye then." The Zippleback darted away in a similar manner to the Terror, not allowing Jiod to approach him too closely, but otherwise fine with him. Perplexed, Jiod tried to approach another, and another, and yet another, but none would deign to allow him to touch them.

"It's fine, none of them took to Freva here either," Hiccup said, and waved a hand towards the silarions, who immediately took up their game of tag-that-makes-no-sense again. "We'll find you one who takes eventually."

§

"This one's the last colony within easy flying distance," Hiccup said. Jiod heard the words, but wasn't in a state to comprehend them, having been dangling from Toothless's thankfully infallible grip the whole day. He'd long ago given up trying to remain wholly conscious and retreated inwards, insensible to the world.

When they landed on the island, Jiod dimly registered that this one was grassy, unlike every other island they'd visited, then slumped to the ground as per usual. Eventually he was roused by Freva, who looked distraught—well, more distraught than usual. "No luck?" Jiod asked, slurring the words together and making it sound like "Nuucck?" but Freva knew what he meant, or guessed.

"Not a single one liked me," she said.

Hiccup asked Jiod to try, so he did—on silarions he'd only heard of, that went invisible and spat acid at him whenever he approached. " _Changewings_ ," he gasped, back-pedalling frantically and throwing his helmet on the ground.

"I don't understand, Toothless likes you," Hiccup said, shaking his head.

"Maybe it thinks we're diseased," Freva said jokingly. "We're traders, after all. Came a long way and all that."

"Hah. I almost wish we were," Jiod muttered. Or maybe they knew if you'd killed silarions before. Come to think of it, he'd only seen young Vikings riding silarions. While it was true they were his age, he knew Berkians had a very strict training regimen before they were allowed to kill dragons, to make an honour out of it or something.

"Maybe you have Grimora!" Hiccup said.

"Huh?" Jiod said eloquently. Their thoughts had apparently been going in very different directions.

"Dragon parasites," Hiccup explained, "they're a type of leech-like dragon that live in fresh water and latch on to anything that passes by. If they latch onto anything that's not a dragon, they'll just sit there, dormant, until they get close to a dragon. Then they'll latch on and start feasting on the poor dragon, making it go crazy with pain and see things that aren't really there until the Grimora are removed, or the dragon… dies."

Jiod winced, then realized, horrified, that if he had Grimora Toothless probably had them now too. "Um… Toothless…"

"Oh, Toothless is fine. He's had them before, and dragons that had them once develop a resistance to them. To get rid of them, we could either look for moles and douse each one in salt, or just cover you entirely with salt. We're kinda short on salt though, so we'll go to Gothi. She's the healer, she'll be able to point out the most likely spots for Grimora," Hiccup said, having already motioned for the silarions on the island to stay well back from Jiod and Freva, and mounted Toothless.

"Best thing is to hurry, don't want you infecting dragons. Grimora are really nasty," Hiccup said, and Freva hurriedly positioned herself on Toothless's back, while Jiod stood in front of Toothless jealously eyeing Freva's spot. Toothless nuzzled Jiod reassuringly, which made him feel slightly better, then picked him up and started flying, which did _not_.

§

"Gothi's taken a vow of silence, so—"

An old woman emerged from the prominent house on the cliff and rapped Hiccup smartly across the knees.

"Ow! What was that for?" Hiccup said, rubbing his knees while Toothless made the _hoc-hoc-hoc_ sounds in the back of his throat that meant laughter. "It isn't funny," Hiccup muttered. Toothless bowled him over, dropped his head on Hiccup's chest, and licked his face in one long, wet motion. Hiccup submitted to the treatment with a few half-hearted protests, then just lay still, giggling helplessly.

Gothi sharply motioned Jiod and Freva into her house, ignoring Toothless's antics.

"You are traders, so I can talk to you. More convenient, you understand," Gothi said. Then the permanent austere expression she wore changed to a terribly forbidding one. "You will tell no one." She didn't even wait for them to respond before asking, "so what is it?"

"Um. Grimoire, I think they're called," Freva said, looking warm and cuddly as a kitten when compared to Gothi.

"Grimora…" Gothi murmered, and took a few jars from a shelf bolted to one side of her house, then placed them on a large table and drew out a chair to sit down in, stir things together, and frown heavily. Without warning, she flung a dust in their faces. Jiod and Freva coughed heavily and glared at her. "What was that for?" Freva said.

"Look for glowing spots," Gothi said, ignoring Freva's question. "Check each other, make sure you examine every inch of yourselves. The glow will shine through clothes. Jiod and Freva checked each other all over for any glowing spots, but couldn't find any.

"We can't—" Jiod started to say, and then Gothi flung a thick cloud of dust at them, completely blinding them and sending them sneezing so heavily they were bent over on the floor by the time the dust cleared. They grudgingly checked themselves over again, and pronounced themselves clean, bracing themselves for an even thicker cloud, but Gothi only got up and examined them herself.

"You're clean," she said, "but there's something else… not right. Like… you're not supposed to be here. Where here is, I can't tell you."

Freva and Jiod glanced uneasily at each other.

"You know. Tell me."

"Should we—" Jiod started to asked, and had his head hooked by Gothi's staff and brought to her face.

"Yes," she said, warning clear in her eyes, "you definitely should."

"I don't think it matters, really—"

"Tell me or else," Gothi said, leaving the else a mystery. Jiod did not want that mystery revealed. Besides, she probably wouldn't believe them—he wouldn't have believed himself.

"We're from the future, or a different present where we went to the past and everything went right, we're not sure. Anyways, we needed to help kill the queen, I think, because where we came from it went to Berk and killed everyone. Then we saw someone kill the queen and take control of her flock, then start attacking everyone," Jiod said, so quickly he was barely able to understand what he was saying, but Gothi seemed able to follow every word with perfect ease.

"I was given something that I was told I would know when to use. I think this is that time," she said, sounding troubled. "Wait there, I'll find it..." she turned to rummage around in the back of her house. She returned holding two objects covered in cloth and spread them on the table. She carefully uncovered them, lifting each corner careful not to touch the objects, which were revealed to be two bracelets made of perfectly spherical gemstones linked together without visible means of combining them, which glowed brightly with an inner light of the deepest blue, verging on purple.

"Used to have three of these, one went missing just a few days ago. I was told the bearers of these would have three chances to right the wrong. They activate when you put them on your wrists." She paused as Jiod and Freva each slipped one on. The glow went out of the bracelets, leaving dull gemstones behind. "If you are telling the truth, you will have three chances to fix everything. If you're not—"

Jiod's vision spun, and everything evaporated into a stream too small to sense, but large enough that he knew it was there, even sound, smell, and taste. It could be best described through his sight as a white pillar of… stuff, in a blank void—not black, but an indescribable colourlessness that made his head hurt when he tried to think about it. Then a scene started to form...

* * *

 **I realize the little poem things don't match the chapters... sorry about that.**

 **To those of you to who the lack of an editor is glaringly obvious and makes you physically ill—come back after the story is finished, I'm going to edit each chapter one by one to fix up all those problems. And anyone who wants to beta read, send me a PM, I desperately need one. XD**


	33. Chapter 33

**I decided I hate the poems and am getting rid of them when this is finished...**

* * *

The world revolved around Jiod's eyes in a way that would have caused a normal person to fall flat on their face, but he was now, for all intents and purposes, immune to disorientation; he never thought he'd be grateful for being carted around by Toothless all over the archipelago, dangling from his claws like a fresh kill. Jiod heard a splat as of someone's face hitting the ground. Then his vision cleared.

Jiod surveyed the view in front of him. He appeared to be on one of the cliffs overlooking the village. The sun shone down brightly, revealing a mob of Vikings clustered in the middle of the village, surrounding a wagon that held something black, alive, and squirming on it, chained down so thoroughly Jiod doubted Thor himself could break out. Jiod tried to look at Freva, but his neck wouldn't move right. He twisted and turned until he found a position that felt extremely awkward, but allowed him to turn his head. Jiod blamed his stiffness on the bracelets. His tribe had a deep suspicion of jewellery, stemming from a time when the chief was the one who'd killed the previous chief, and they'd found a rich mine full of copious amounts of gold, gems, and other precious metals. For a period of about a hundred years, each chief and their family was killed by a gift of jewellery that hid some nefarious poison. Being Vikings, it took the tribe the entire hundred years to spurn all shiny gifts and consider them cursed.

It took Jiod a few seconds to comprehend what he was seeing. Then he screamed, a shrill high pitched noise that grated unpleasantly in his ears. Beside him stood a silarion that looked like it was made out of solid steel, every inch of it looking sharp enough to cause bleeding at the lightest touch. Any awe the silarion might have inspired was mostly lost on Jiod though, as it was currently sprawled on its face in a completely undignified manner. A few moment of holding completely still later, Jiod thought it looked rather small for a silarion. After it failed to do more than twitch for a few more seconds, Jiod, bored, decided to poke it. And fell over.

"Hey! What—" he said—or tried to, anyway. All that emerged was a series of garbled squawks and chirps. Jiod spent some time figuring out how to move his head again, and then looked at himself. And screamed again. There was a Deadly Nadder where he should have been. Then he calmed, remembering some of what had transpired during his time unconscious while holding the knowledge crystal. He'd been in a Night Fury's body that time, except the Night Fury had been in there with him. _Hello? Anyone there?_ Jiod thought, just to be sure. No one answered, so he assumed he was alone this time. Which was a problem, as he'd completely forgotten how to use his body. Jiod desperately dug through his mind for anything that might help—and found it surprisingly easily. He felt something foreign in his head, like an idea inserted by someone else that he never would have thought of otherwise. If he thought about it in a certain way…

Suddenly, everything made sense. He needed to move _just so_ to stand up, and walking was just as easy. Jiod examined the flailing dragon on the ground, automatically naming her silver-scale-was-Viking before he realised it. Frightened, he retreated from the object in his mind, pulling his consciousness back and regaining his mental breath. He cursed the bracelets again. How were they supposed to help as silarions? If he wanted to do more than flop on the floor he went feral, and Freva didn't even know how to…

Freva suddenly flipped over and growled at Jiod. Ok, scratch that, she did know how to activate the… thing.

"They're taking Toothless somewhere. We probably need to free him," Jiod said. It came out as Nadder sounds again, but hopefully Freva would understand what he meant… Freva had narrowed her eyes at Jiod, eyes that did not have any light of understanding within. Great, they couldn't communicate. Jiod turned on the silarion instincts and tried to tell Freva that they had to free Toothless again—it was worth a try. He made more Nadder sounds, but this time he unconsciously swayed back and forth and made myriad other tiny adjustments, which he understood to mean _take away, silarion, humans_. How he understood, he couldn't tell, Freva seemed to as well, and turned towards the village calculatingly. Or at least, Jiod hoped she had; she could just be in control of her silarion body and wanting to hunt the humans for food. After she did nothing more than sniff in the village's direction, Jiod felt reasonably reassured.

 _Now._ Freva said with a thump of her tail and shot into the sky towards the village. Toothless, who was being wheeled onto the docks, surrounded by a mob of Vikings. Jiod was momentarily stunned; he'd thought they'd at least make a cursory attempt at a plan before charging into the thick of things. Jiod, frustrated, saw no choice other than to follow her to help get them out of this mess, so he took off not far behind.

 _Food… No, help Toothless… Food… Stop it… Foooooood… Wait, what?_ Jiod thought. Freva had dived down towards a large Viking nest that smelled of food… _storage shed,_ some part of Jiod said. The non-silarion part of Jiod was ignored, and dived after Freva, selecting another food nest. Jiod stood on the roof for a few moments, confused about how to get in. He looked at Freva, who was blowing a thick stream of flame against the roof. Jiod hastily did the same. He gave the roof a dragon frown; it was burning, but it wasn't collapsing. Jiod ignored the screaming Vikings surrounding his building and clawed at the roof until it collapsed. He eyed the Vikings with satisfaction; it was _his_ food. Then a distress call reached him from the floating Viking nests. A nestmate in danger overrode the tantalizing scent of fresh food, and Jiod flew screeching to his defence, Freva behind him.

The Vikings, having seen what they were up to, clustered around Toothless, guarding him with a forest of spears, axes, swords, and other, more exotic weaponry. A few even fired hunting bows, then stopped when the low-powered bolts _plinged_ against the silarion's scales with no effects. Thanks to the attempted raid on the storehouses, Vikings were stung out confusedly all around the village, otherwise what happened next never would have succeeded.

Jiod roared, spat out a fireball, and shot out a decent volley of spikes, distracting the Vikings while Freva slithered on the ground behind the Vikings, waiting until they'd walked just far enough from Toothless… and in a whirl of razor sharp blades, Freva had freed Toothless without a nick. Freva flew away towards Jiod, while Toothless sprung over the heads of the Vikings… and landed right in front of them. He immediately bounded off, but not before a few of the faster Vikings jumped onto his back and started swinging weapons at him and yelling, which only spurred Toothless on to greater speeds. Jiod watched the spectacle, confused; why didn't Toothless just fly away? He looked at Freva and saw a similar expression in her eyes, then eyed the storehouses again… and was again saved by Toothless's distress call. Freva and Jiod bolted into action again, flying after Toothless, who was headed towards the forest. One of the Vikings fell from Toothless, charred beyond recognition, which didn't bother Jiod as much as it should. He filed it away to be bothered about later.

Toothless was still exposed halfway between the village and the forest in a plains area devoid of trees, with Vikings hacking at his scales. Thick black streams of blood gushed forth from multiple wounds, and he started to slow. Grinning, one Viking jumped for his head and wrestled with it for a few brief moments before Toothless overpowered the man's grip and bit his head clean off. That left two Vikings on his back still grimly digging into his flesh. Toothless collapsed, and the Vikings let out a cheer. One raised an axe and brought it down for a death blow, only to be shredded to bloody pieces when Freva slammed into him. Jiod briefly mourned the loss of that body—it could have fed them for days—while a small part of him screamed in horror. Then he smashed into the remaining Viking and grilled him, staying his tail. He didn't want to actually hit anyone with Nadder spikes; they were more painful than fire, and Jiod suspected they were coated in some kind of poison.

Toothless croaked, a gasping, sputtering noise that brought up more black blood, and Freva and Jiod were instantly by his side, crooning and supporting him. It was clear that he needed to be brought to the nest, though his injuries could have been avoided if only he'd flown… then Jiod saw his tail and mentally smacked himself for not noticing that the Night Fury _didn't have a tail_. Hiccup must have fashioned an artificial one.

"Toothless!" a horrified voice cried out. Speaking of Hiccup… it looked like he'd been taking a walk on the barely supported wooden platforms suspended on the side of the cliffs, and just climbed back up to the top of the cliff, which happened to be the plains between the village and forest.

Hiccup rushed over to where Toothless was supported between Jiod and Freva. "No, no, you'll be ok bud, take it easy," he said, stroking his snout. Toothless gave him a weak purr and nuzzled his face. "Just lie down bud, go on." Hiccup then shoved at Freva and Jiod. "Let him lie down! He needs rest to recover from injuries this bad!" They grudgingly let Toothless down. He softly burbled to Hiccup and licked his face, streaking black blood thickly across it. Hiccup didn't even notice, just held Toothless with tears in his eyes, repeatedly saying, "It'll be all right, come on bud, you'll make it, it'll be all right…"

"Hiccup, these dragons killed people!" Astrid said. Everyone turned towards her except Toothless, who had closed his eyes and stopped responding. "I—I mean… they're dragons, Hiccup!" she said almost pleadingly.

Hiccup stood up from where he'd been kneeling besides Toothless, eyes cold. "I thought you'd changed, Astrid." He wore no expression, only a terrible emptiness that reminded Jiod of Drago's smile…

"No!" he tried to say, but collapsed to the ground. The silarion instincts were gone. He couldn't stop Hiccup if he wanted to now, couldn't stop him from becoming that _thing._

His vision faded, ears buzzed, and smells and taste turned to dust and ash. The scene spun around him again, until he was once more standing on a cliff overlooking the village. The sun was shining. He looked beside him and saw… a Gronckle. Not too bad. Slow, but could definitely take hits. Then he looked at himself, and felt shock at nearly the level he had when he'd seen himself in the form of a Deadly Nadder. This time it seemed he was to be a Terrible Terror. Jiod groaned, making a high pitched buzzing noise.


	34. Chapter 34

Jiod found his new body much easier to control than the Nadder's. Everything just made sense in some visceral way. Even though he lacked the instincts that had come with the Nadder, he still knew he could shoot a fireball just by doing this series of motions, or fly using that. There was a freedom to it that appealed to Jiod, who had spent most of his life sailing off to distant places on a whim, though always under the guise of some important mission for the good of the tribe. But he was on a mission, and he needed Freva's help. He couldn't see himself doing much good; Terrible Terrors were considered pests more than a real danger to Vikings.

 _Awake. Decide-future._ He said to Freva, dancing in front of her face. She gathered herself with a grumble, then looked at herself. Then at Jiod. Then roared. _Upset bad useless how_ , she growled. Silarion-speak was coming more easily to them, and they found themselves able to work around words they didn't have by clobbering meanings together in ways that ground horribly against each other's brains, but worked well enough.

 _No, can, only must-have decide-future good,_ Jiod replied, then thumped his tail against the ground so rapidly it became a flickering blur and sent up a dust cloud around them. _Must-have… above… above they not-here,_ Jiod said. It was the best he could do—the closest word to before was above—but Freva seemed to grasp his meaning.

She sprawled across the ground in a way that Jiod knew was the paying attention pose of Gronckles, and they both thought. Ideas flickered through Jiod's mind and were discarded almost before they entered. They could make a net—no, they couldn't. They could find Hiccup again and do what they had last time, but this time with Hiccup Toothless would be able to escape—no, they had no idea where Hiccup was, and the Vikings had been just about to take Toothless aboard their ship and clamp him into bindings that looks much more secure and permanent. Perhaps— _We burn floating nests, we take nest-mate,_ Freva said at length. Jiod blinked and unconsciously licked an eyeball. It wasn't a complicated plan, or even a hard one. The only reason Vikings were a match for silarions was because silarions had no concept of stealth, blazing in fires burning and throats roaring, and stayed to fight when they could have been long gone with all the food in the storehouses. All they needed was for Freva flame the ships in the harbour as secretly as she could, then, if there were still operable ships when they noticed her, Jiod would sneak up to the remaining ones and set fire to their hulls from the sides pointing towards the sea. _Agree,_ Jiod said, and hopped onto Freva's back. She gave him a disgruntled look, but acquiesced to his presence and flapped her tiny wings hummingbird-style towards the docks, low to the ground so as not to be noticed.

Freva skimmed the waterline, hovering besides the docks with the ships hiding her from view. Jiod flew up above the ships and surveyed the scene below. Vikings were still hauling Toothless towards a boat, fastening new restraints to him piecemeal. Jiod took note of the ship and fluttered down to Freva again and led her to the one he'd spotted Toothless heading to from above. He let out a small fireball and felt fires inside himself he hadn't even noticed diminish fractionally. The fireball sputtered weakly against the ship's side then went out. Jiod frowned and latched himself onto it. When his paws touched the ship he felt a thick waxy layer surrounding the wood. Jiod concentrated his fire into a thin but intense stream which failed to do anything. Jiod eyed the wood and made narrowed his fire-throat so tightly it pained him, and released his hottest fires. After a few moments of failing to catch, the wax on the area he had aimed at was gone, and a small fire was crackling merrily. Freva took that as her cue to fire as well, her far larger blast splattering against the ship like a liquid and making it list over dangerously. Surprised shouts and cries reached them from the docks; apparently the Berkians had been in the process of boarding. Small patches of flame sprung up where the wax had been weakest, and Freva shot at it again, and the boat, instead of catching fire, did the opposite. Wood creaked as the boat leaned sideways, slowly, slowly… then it reached the tipping point and, for a moment, could have been righted—but Freva headbutted it, sending it decidedly over the tipping point and into the water. Jiod felt like cheering, and rammed another boat in celebration. Unfortunately for him he wasn't a Gronckle, so the boat stayed upright while he fluttered off and landed dazed on Freva's back. Freva proceeded to ram another boat, sending Jiod spinning off of her and causing him to lose his momentary celebratory mood entirely.

"They're ramming the boats! Looks like the devil had some friends," a voice shouted with the air of authority Jiod recognised. It must be the chief, which didn't bode well for future boat ramming—finding and solving problems was what they did all day, every day. "Get ten men to each ship, no armour. Quickly, quickly!"

Freva heard as well as Jiod, and started bashing ships with a frantic energy. Even the ships with the ten Viking minimum on them couldn't fend her off, and soon only four ships were left unsunk, stuffed to the gills with Vikings bearing their favourite weapons and unburned by any armour, allowing them to leap impressive lengths. Freva shook yet another overeager Viking off, Jiod flaming his face to encourage him, then stopped and hovered before the boat. A few volleys of arrows _pling_ ed off her scales, then petered out as the Vikings realised the arrows from their low-powered hunting bows didn't even register to her.

Freva buzzed forwards and the Vikings raised their weapons and bounced on the balls of their feet. Then she stopped in midair, hovering, and shot a fireball into the side of the ship. It rocked unsteadily, knocking Vikings off and tipping. The Vikings left on the docks, seeing what was about to happen, threw anything they could at the ship, including themselves, to keep it from tipping. Freva quickly followed her shot up with another, and another, and then nothing was left of the ship but Vikings treading water and clinging to a few pieces of driftwood.

Vikings were no slouches when it came to adapting to new enemies, and the three remaining ships immediately moved together, supporting each other and keeping the force of Freva's blasts spread out throughout the ships. Jiod saw no way to get past this defence and Freva hovered uncertainly before the triangle.

 _Hunt no-hunt wait-stalk?_ Jiod asked.

Freva paused to think about it. _...Yes._ She buzzed back to the cliff they'd appeared on. It offered a good vantage point, and was close enough for them to dive into battle over the ships the moment one started to sail away, or the guard let up.

 _You sleep I watch,_ Jiod said. Freva nodded drowsily and immediately fell into blissful unconsciousness, even though the sun was still high in the sky. A few hours ramming into and fireballing ships would make anyone exhausted, though silarions, like cats, tended to use large amounts of energy in short bursts of a few hours and then sleep the rest of the day, which allowed them to eat far less than one would think of creatures their size.

Terrible Terror's, however, tended to stay in a constant state of hyper-awareness and lived with the buzzing urge to do something. They only slept an average of a few minutes a day, and that was from micro-sleeps so only the Terror's themselves were aware that they happened. Jiod wasn't sure whether to be happy about this or not. On one hand, he had no trouble staying awake and observing the minutiae of everything going on in the village. For example, he knew that Toothless had been chained so heavily it must have been a struggle to breath and thrown in a heavily reinforced cage on wheels, then carted off somewhere, and that Hiccup was running around nearly in tears with concern about him, and that no one would tell Hiccup how Toothless was, or even if he was alive or not… on the other hand, the need to _do something_ and do it _now_ had brought Jiod into the village itself to eavesdrop. A Viking might say it was a miracle Jiod hadn't been spotted with all the snooping around he was doing, but that Viking clearly didn't know how stealthy Terror's could be when they were actually trying. It turned out that Terrors have a slight camouflaging ability, allowing their scales to take on the vague pattern and mostly right colour of whatever they were up against. For Jiod, it was the inside of Hiccup's vest, until Hiccup pulled him out at the edge of the Village.

"Look, I appreciate you being here through all of… this," Hiccup said, scratching Jiod under the chin. He knew it should be degrading and he should really get Hiccup to stop, but it felt _really good…_ "but it's not safe for dragons to be in the village any more. I mean, it wasn't before, but now it _really_ isn't." Hiccup continued to scratch Jiod until he realised he was _purring._ Appalled, he snapped his jaws shut. Hiccup chuckled, then lightly shoved Jiod away. "Go on," he said, then sprinted back inside the village, now looking grimly determined instead of desperately sad.

Jiod flew up to check on the status of the ships again after Hiccup left. Still guarded. He had to give them credit, they were more tenacious than his tribe, which would have given up or found another way hours ago. It was almost night, but Vikings were still thickly patrolling the decks of the remaining ships, lighting torches, and tying the triangle formation more tightly together. Jiod flew back to the cliff to check on Freva who, thankfully, was still asleep. Jiod didn't know what she'd have done if she'd woken up to him missing, but it probably wouldn't have been anything good.

§

"Dragons have been oppressed all this time by the cruelty of Vikings who did _nothing_ to understand them, _nothing_ to help, and in time considering it _fun_ ," Hiccup spat, finishing his tirade. The entire village had gathered when he'd landed with his dragon army, looking up at him astride Toothless in the middle of the plaza. They hadn't tried to attack; the last time had killed over half the village. The survivors looked at him with a mixture of expressions ranging from dull and hollow, those who had given up hope, to seething with impotent rage, those who wanted to attack no matter the cost but were restrained by the knowledge that they wouldn't get anywhere, and finally to those with carefully blank expressions. These were the ones Hiccup had to look out for; these were the ones with the plans and the means to carry them out.

"So I propose that dragons live among Vikings… starting with Berk," Hiccup said, staring down at the sea of faces surrounding him. His words finally broke through to them. Silence became whispers, whispers became angry conversations, and angry conversations became a mob universally shouting him down. Hiccup only twitched his hand, but Toothless knew the meaning, and fired a purple blast of condensed flame over the crowd. The crowd subsided into mutters. They had expected anything else; death by dragon, exile to distant lands, subjugation under draconian masters that—they believed—they'd overturn in a year, if that, and a hopeful few even believed that Hiccup had come to apologize.

"All arms and armour will be confiscated, of course," Hiccup said, ignoring scattered cries of outrage and mutinous glares, "and the chief will enforce the death of any who harm a dragon. Won't you, dad?" he said coldly, turning to where Stoik the Vast stood at the front of the crowd encircling him. The chief of Berk looked to have aged hundreds of years since Hiccup had last seen him, and now stood with a permanent stoop and held a cane, his posture much diminished.

"You're not my son," Stoik said, his voice still retaining the commanding, indisputable tone of the chief. Hiccup glared at him and looked pointedly about at the assembled Vikings, and unspoken threat. "But… I will," Stoik said, the words wrenched out of him with an incredible effort, broken and hollow though they sounded.

"Good," Hiccup said, and left. The dragons descended upon the village like a vengeful apocalypse. The Vikings gazed upwards in mingled horror and resignation.

By the end of the week, only a few dozen Vikings remained uneaten, unable to venture outside of their homes.

Stoik gaze into his mug, which reflected a face aged with grief no man should have to bear, then broken and reformed time and time again until he was a shambling wreck of his former self. Stoik downed the drink in a single gulp. Unfortunately, he had a very good stomach for alcohol. If he hadn't, he'd have been dead by now, and counted himself lucky. He stood on shaky legs and headed back behind the counter for his umpteenth bottle. The owners of the bar had been among the first killed. Stoik vividly recalled Hiccup, face cold in fury, reciting a list of each dragon killed by their hands, and how they should have accepted the chance to redeem themselves and been grateful for it, and so on. Stoik had been forced to watch, face and emotions frozen, as the Vikings were sentenced to death by fire, and their roasted carcasses eaten with enthusiasm by a rat-like species of dragon that now infested the entire village like a plague. That had brought on a fresh bout of vengeful Vikings, who'd all died by sundown… Stoik finally found a full keg and downed it in one gulp, seeking to stave off the memories… the horrible, horrible memories. If he drank enough, he could pretend it was all a dream, and he was in the mead hall, drinking to great adventures, and Hiccup was… Hiccup… a single tear rolled down Stoik's cheek, the first since learning of Hiccup's terrible secret. More followed.

At the end of the week, the food ran out. Stoik met his end at the claws of a Monstrous Nightmare. Weak with hunger, he didn't even scratch the beast. He managed to bash his chair leg against a tooth, then he was gone, just another snack to the Nightmare.

Within a year, the Hiccup had conquered the archipelago. A month later, the Red Death took control of his dragon army and sent him into exile on a Night Fury. The pair went feral and took to stalking a jungle. Toothless accidentally blasted Hiccup in a hunting accident. On realising what he'd done, he took his own life. The Red Death, pleased, thought her new army of slaves was the largest she'd ever had, and the easiest to gather, too.

§

Jiod groaned when everything stopped spinning. He was sure they'd stopped Toothless from being taken to the queen's nest that time. Granted, he and Freva had died horribly to an unexpected axe from behind… he shuddered at the memory. Maybe they had to actually live to change anything. Jiod consoled himself that Hiccup wouldn't have to see two silarions killed by his chief, who he'd obviously felt close to.


	35. Chapter 35

Jiod gazed at the village and blinked. He squinted and thought he must still be under the disorienting effects of… well, dying, and then being plopped back on the same cliff as if nothing had happened. He sat down and idly thought about what they'd have to do to actually convince the stupid magic bracelets that they'd succeeded while he waited for his vision to clear. He heard a rustling to his side and looked over, mentally dismissing the thought as inconsequential; Berk's wise woman had said they had three chances, and this was their third.

By his side stood an electric blue Night Fury with jagged red tendrils snaking over her body in completely random and asymmetrical patterns except for the head, which was devoid of any red except for the eyes, where the colour manifested itself in her pupils. Jiod suppressed a shudder at the sight, as red eyes were traditionally a sign of possession. Jiod stood up unsteadily, rocking on two legs. _What kind of silarion am I? I feel so weak…_ Jiod thought, stumbling about. His vision hadn't cleared, remaining blurry with muted colours. His other senses also suffered noticeably. He couldn't feel the shifting of the winds, or scent out any possible dangers. Small movements he made with his feet went unheard. Jiod started to panic, thinking that perhaps the injury that had killed him on their last attempt had been too severe, and he was dying… then he looked down at himself and saw… hands. Very human hands, splayed open in an instinct to claw in defence, and a very normal tunic. Jiod felt the emotions hit him distantly, as if someone else was experiencing them and he was merely observing the effects. Shock came first. Then anger. Surely his senses weren't really that bad. Then denial. It was the bracelets. It must be the bracelets, they did it, giving him a human body so he could save the archipelago, and very possibly the lands beyond, but in return leaving him half blind. Even his thoughts felt slower. When Freva finally got over the disorientation of being returned to the cliff, her movements were faster than his mind could comprehend, and she seemed to simply disappear from one place and reappear in another.

"How..." Jiod began, struggling with an uncooperative tongue, "how do we… win… like this?" Freva gave him an anxious whimper, then a series of barks and growls that left him completely lost.

"I won't be any use," Jiod said softly, stroking Freva's snout the way he used to the little Nadder. An image of Holly perched on his shoulder, jaws open in an indignant chirp, flashed through his mind, almost bringing tears. Freva snorted impatiently and headbutted Jiod's back. When Jiod failed to move, Freva bodily dragged him onto her back, where he sat trying to cling to the frills that crowned her head and being slapped by them for his troubles. "How am I supposed to stay on, then?" Jiod asked plaintively. A long row of spikes immediately jutted out from Freva's spine, stretching from neck to tail. "I guess that works," Jiod said, and cautiously grabbed one of the spikes. Freva snorted but didn't fling him off, then sort of wiggled before flinging herself into the air in one smooth move. Cloud cover was virtually non-existent, not that it mattered. Freva appeared to be flying at full speed, which allowed her to pass over the heads of startled Vikings, who stopped loading Toothless on a ship to get down, though they couldn't do more than hear her at the speed she was going. She made a beeline right for the Arena and arrowed towards a gaping hole in the top, then let off four blasts in quick succession, widening the gap to such an extent that even a Monstrous Nightmare could be able to fit through with ease.

Jiod scurried off Freva's back the moment she landed, not wanting to have to cling to such precarious holds for longer than he absolutely had to. Freva ignored him and blasted several thick iron doors with the signature weapon of the Night Fury, obliterating the relatively fragile mechanisms that controlled whether they were open or closed. A simple pull to each of the doors was enough to unleash the silarions captured within, who revived at their new freedom and broke out in a cacophony of squawks, chirps, roars, growls, and hisses. "Hey. Hey! You! All of you, stop! We need…" Jiod gave up trying to get the silarions to listen to him and resignedly gave Freva a small wave. Freva roared and spat a low powered bolt of plasma into the metal grid covering the Arena from above, creating another hole.

"Right! Now that's done, let's get to it. We're here to free you, and every si—uh, dragon, under control of the queen. You guys will come with us and help destroy her," Jiod said. The silarions looked at him silently, judging. Then the Terror broke into tiny twittering chirps that sounded like it was choking on something. Then the other silarions started making _hough-hough-hough_ noises and extending their necks and bobbing them up and down. Jiod stood trying to tell if they were using some sort of secret silarion code before he realised that they were laughing. Freva quickly put a stop to it with a hiss, and Jiod noted in the back of his mind that Freva, or maybe just Night Furies in general, had some influence with other silarions.

"Follow us!" Jiod shouted at the silarions, and then jumped on Freva's back before they could react and felt them rise. Jiod had to look down and check to make sure they were actually in the air and not just hovering a few feet from the ground, then somewhat bitterly remembered that he could sense pretty much nothing any more. "Er… you _do_ know how to find the queen, right?" he said as quietly as he was able. Freva gave a small snort and smacked Jiod's face with said ear, and he flinched back, first feeling a flash of resentment, then letting out a small chuckle. "Sorry, 'course you can," Jiod said, patting her… shoulder?

Jiod didn't worry about the silarions from the Arena following them for a little while, as he would hardly be able to detect them, but grew concerned as Freva continued to circle the island. They remained locked in a long looping pattern for some time, neither making any attempt at communication, until Jiod said "Do you think we could take her on our own? Maybe if you used the Night Fury fire—"

A loud roar cut him off, and he looked over his shoulder to see the bright red Monstrous Nightmare from the Arena winging towards them from behind. Jiod smiled, then felt briefly confused as he saw the Terrible Terror perched on its back, curled up in a way that suggested it was… sleeping. Jiod blinked. Nightmare's weren't the most social of creatures; even Vikings knew that, and as a rule they didn't know anything about silarions except how to kill them. Jiod felt a tension he hadn't even noticed fall away from Freva, then saw the rest of the silarions fly towards them from different spots around the island, roaring as they flew. The village must have been scrambling to find which the direction the raid was from. When they realised no raid was forthcoming, well, Jiod had no idea _what_ they'd do.

Freva flew lazily, occasionally flipping over in a way that would have made anyone except Jiod nauseous. The silarions drifted closer together over the course of the journey until Jiod could see disgruntled and envious expressions, quickly veiled on a few of their faces every time Freva performed an extra complicated bit of acrobatics. Soon enough, they reached the island, surrounded by a thick layer of fog. Jiod shivered and grasped his thick fur coat more closely to him. He hoped this island's fog didn't have the same intent to keep everything inside it that the future Berk's did. The silarions slowly descended, then landed on a stony beach, which stretched on before abruptly terminating in front of an enormous mountain. As soon as the silarions touched down, a loud buzzing stopped all at once, leaving a resonant silence in its wake. Jiod immediately felt emotions hit harder and thoughts form faster. He shivered again. The fog looked to have been clouding his mind. If it hadn't stopped after enough time, he'd probably have eventually fallen dead after forgetting how to breathe.

"Looks like we got here first," Jiod observed, trying to push the unsettling thought away, which was paradoxically much harder without the sound's effects. Freva gave him a deadpan look and settled down on the rocks, then closed her eyes. "What… are you seriously _sleeping_? _Here_?!" Jiod said. Freve didn't respond, and the other silarions decided to take her cue. The only exception was the Terrible Terror, which settled onto himself onto head and busied itself making a nest out of his hair that he'd probably never use again. "Right. I come back here to save all of you, and I get… this," Jiod said, but he didn't mean it, and a smile creased his face as he thought of what they were doing. They would save Freva's brother, they'd save Berk, an entire village, they'd save Holly, wherever she was now, and… Nero would never die. An enormous shrieking and wailing shattered the complete silence that had fallen once the intruders had landed on the queen's island, sending Jiod and his silarion companions standing bolt upright. Suddenly a stream of multicoloured flashing somethings shot out of the top of the mountain. Jiod immediately thought it was a volcano, and they'd come to the wrong place, then took a closer look and realised that it was Drago's—or rather, the silarion queen's, at least for now—swarm. He resignedly expected to die before they'd have the chance to fight, and raised his axe… and the swarm darted off in every direction, leaving Jiod confused and his companions suddenly extremely anxious about something.

With a roar, a huge silarion broke through the mountain, sending huge shards of stone in every direction. Then Jiod realised the Vikings still hadn't arrived, they had no plan on how to deal with the queen, and it was charging them.


	36. Chapter 36

Jiod's vision jolted. Then he was looking at the Red Death from the side. She continued charging the rest of the silarions. He darted a quick glance beside him and saw the blue Night Fury that was Freva beside him, a low growl emanating from her throat and the red vein-like streaks encircling her pulsing at high speed. The fearsome speed of Night Furies was not exaggerated in the least. Jiod shook his head to clear the clusters of blinking yellow dots from his vision. The other silarions weren't as fast as Freva, but they were outpacing the queen, all except…

Jiod's eyes widened. The Gronckle was just too slow. For one shining moment it looked as if it might get away with only being clipped—but then the queen reoriented herself in its direction with a roar and thrust her jaws out faster than anything that big had any right to move. The Gronckle had no chance. The queen was so big she didn't even have to swallow. With a triumphant roar, she turned towards the only intruders left still on the ground. Jiod gulped.

"Hey, can I just… thanks," Jiod said hurriedly, and clambered onto Freva without the customary tugging to make sure he wouldn't fall off. Freva shot into the air at her so-fast-it's-pretty-much-teleporting speed and started gliding in long, lazy circles, flapping her wings only once every so often. Jiod glanced with some concern at her heaving flanks. It looked like that speed left her exhausted if used too much.

Freva suddenly tilted forward, an eerily familiar whistling sound coming from her mouth. Jiod realised what it was, and instinctively tried to duck; the Night Fury he'd killed had nearly obliterated him dozens of times before he'd killed it through sheer luck by luring under an unstable rocky overhang that collapsed on the both of them. A blazing blue-red circular bolt flung itself from Freva's mouth and onto the queen's head. The queen roared in frustration. Right when she was about to catch one of the intruders another would dart in and attack from a different direction. Then a plan formed in her mind.

The sun had moved noticeably in the sky before the queen showed signs that the constant barrage of fire was getting to her. She first stumbled where before she'd been able to leap, then lunged just a little bit more slowly. Her shimmering sheets of fire lasted half as long.

"I think it's time," Jiod said, having gotten used to his precarious situation atop Freva without any saddle like the one Toothless had displayed. Freva growled in agreement and unleashed a roar to rival one of the queen's. The silarions flew to the queen with identical snarls, ready to tear through the scales of her throat and end her threat once and for all. Freva followed closely behind, already forming one of her highest-powered plasma bolts.

And the queen lunged. A quick snap devoured the Zippleback. A massive paw was brought down on the Nadder, which was then pressed into the ground at a speed impossible to survive. Jiod winced as he heard the Nadder cruelly crushed against the rocks. The Nightmare and its Terror passenger alone escaped to Freva's position, who was still firing at the queen. The queen no longer acted like the bolts bothered her and simply shrugged them off while continuing to charge them. Another paw brought the Nightmare down. A bite left only the tail.

Freva flew backwards, but wasn't able to evade at her highest speed. A claw herded her back towards the queen's maw. Before she could gather herself for another attempt, a paw had formed a cage around her, bringing them inexorably closer to the queen's jaws.

A bright silvery mist lit the air next to them, one that looked quite familiar… then it was gone, and in its place…

"Nero?" Jiod said incredulously. Freva growled and looked ready to devour him.

"Uh, no, he's actually a good guy remember, don't eat him," Jiod said, belatedly remembering that the only time Freva had seem the human Nero was when he'd been pirating.

"Yes, how do you…" Nero began, then shook his head. "No matter. I assume you found this queen's secret as well?" Nero paused for an instant then forged on before Jiod could respond. "If you haven't, this one is on the way to learning how to control humans as well. I have just enough power to destabilize myself and destroy us both once in her mouth." The glow began to form around Nero again and his body seemed to shake and shimmer as if it was in a heat wave. "Good hunting!" Nero said with a feral grin, and then Freva and Jiod were on the shore, watching with horror as the queen brought her paw up to her jaw…

And a Nightmare landed next to Freva.

"You!" Jiod said, and reached for his axe… only to realise it had fallen during Freva's frantic flight. He knew it was a miracle he'd even survived, but couldn't help but feel bitter that he'd kept it with him throughout all the craziness that had happened to him and it was in this moment that it was finally lost.

"Wait! I didn't betray you," Ikhelt said, and glanced worriedly at the queen. "Where's Freva?"

"Right here. The portal turned her into a silarion," Jiod said, uncertain. Just because Ikhelt said he wasn't a traitor was hardly proof… and yet he looked so certain, so at ease…

"I need to save someone," Ikhelt said. "You seen a guy, not a Viking, silver eyes, looks like—"

"Nero!" Jiod said.

"Er, yeah, where—"

"He's getting eaten by the queen," Jiod said, pointing. "How do we help?"

"Distract her," Ikhelt said, and flung himself back on the green Nightmare, which flew towards the queen. Freva started up a flame in her jaws…

"Wait," Jiod said, placing a hand on her snout. "Remember, Nero's going to destroy the queen. Why does Ikhelt want to stop that?" Freva narrowed her eyes at Jiod and growled. "Wait! Just consider—" Freva shoved Jiod to the side and shot her blast at the queen. The queen paused just long enough for Ikhelt to reach her. The Nightmare darted between her claws and grasped a human figure, illuminated with a silvery glow… and flung it towards the ocean. "We need to get him!" Jiod shouted, flinging himself back onto Freva, who let out a distraught scream and darted towards the falling human at a speed Jiod had thought she'd been too exhausted to reach.

Freva flung herself down, beating her wings to reach Nero's speed. Jiod took a few moments to bring himself out of his terror at holding onto Freva in _this_ direction at _this_ speed with no safety net to observe Nero. Oddly enough, he didn't even seem to notice his fall. He only kept glowing, eyes closed, with a faint smile on his face. The glow grew brighter and brighter…

Freva reached him, and Jiod spared a hand to haul Nero onto her back. Freva wheeled back around towards the queen…

A series of fireballs races into the path between them and the queen.

"Stop! You don't understand!" Ikhelt shouted, his voice heard faintly as his mount shot at them.

Jiod clung onto Nero even more tightly as they raced towards the queen, hoping against hope they'd make it in time…

And Nero exploded. Light washed over Jiod's senses, blinding him in every way and sending him into unconsciousness.

Freva screeched in distress. Their chance to kill the queen was gone, and Jiod was probably dead protecting her from the blast. Jiod fell limply from her back, but Nero's body was no where to be seen. She caught Jiod in her claws and flew away from the island with a screech, determined to return and _destroy_ the monster.

§

"Werrami?" Jiod slurred. He looked around. He decided he must be getting used to his vision again. Around him was a small island with miniature trees. He looked down and stumbled backwards. There were scales, silver scales…

He turned his head entirely around. Freva looked back at him, looking as shocked as he felt.

"So… we get another chance?" he said. Freva stood still for a moment.

"Yes," she hissed.

"I… understood you," Jiod said.

Freva grinned. "Let's kill a queen."


	37. Chapter 37

Again, Jiod thought that Freva might want to plan or something, but apparently she didn't know the word.

"You know I don't know how to do… anything, right?" Jiod growled at Freva. "You will," Freva said, flipping around and gliding upside down. Jiod eyed her warily. "You'll need some… pressure. That's how we learned… uh, Viking stuff," she said, not wanting to reveal too much about her tribe, which, as far as most other tribes were concerned, didn't even exist. Jiod huffed and spent the rest of the flight attempting to fly without jerking around between air currents too much, while Freva tried more and more elaborate manoeuvres.

Their journey wore on until they flew through the mist once more, though this time Jiod's improved vision was able to pierce it easily enough. They paused before the mists ended. The queen was still flying around and snapping at something…

The dome of clear air surrounding the island began pulsing erratically as the queen grew more frustrated, and Jiod, with his lack of control over his new wings, was revealed more than once before he could draw back. Jiod felt grateful that his new silver scales blended into the mist so well, then guilt over Nero's death. Finally he pushed his emotions to the side to deal with later, after the queen was dead and Berk was destroyed. Jiod and Freva hovered, uncertain, until an extra-large pulse caught Jiod off guard, allowing a clear view of what—or rather, who—the Red Death was pursuing. The blurry form of a silarion resolved into a green Monstrous Nightmare, and on top of it, wielding a strangely bright bow, sat Ikhelt.

"It's Ikhelt," Jiod said after hastily withdrawing back into the fog, "what do we do?"

"Nothing," Freva replied, voice gone soft but dark. Jiod looked at her with alarm. "So we just—?"

"Wait 'till the queen gets him or he gets away. Doesn't matter. Then we kill the queen," she said. Jiod couldn't refute her logic, but privately thought she should have been more concerned about her brother. Still, they hovered in short circles as the day drew to a close, the dying rays of the sun nearly completely obscured by the fog, leaving a dark atmosphere lit occasionally by the hellish gleam of the queen's sheets of fire. Ikhelt would stop his mount every so often in order to aim carefully, ever so carefully, at some part of the queen, but seemed frustrated for hours, until one shot seemed to land where he wanted. A triumphant shout drew curious looks from the observers. From then on Ikhelt was content to simply evade the queen, lazily firing from his curiously bright bow, which gleamed even in the absence of other light to reflect, every so often.

Soon the queen grew sluggish, and the dome of fog crept ever close to the island. Jiod internally sighed, knowing what would happen. He hope Ikhelt's death would be quick. But the queen became slower and slower until, in the middle of a charge, she dropped unconscious to the ground. Ikhelt looked around, then, seemingly satisfied, urged the Nightmare away from the island in a direction that Jiod instinctively knew would take him back to Berk.

"Is it…?" Jiod said, almost afraid to ask.

"Only one way to find out," Freva said, and dropped out of the surrounding fog and into the bubble of air, which was now barely bigger than the queen's body. Jiod followed at a healthy distance; she could evade the queen with ease, but he still had to get used to his new body. After Freva fluttered impatiently over the queen, Jiod figured it was safe and descended, straining his hearing for any sign she was still alive, and, unfortunately, found it.

"How do we kill her?" He asked Freva. He supposed they could enter her throat and try cutting it open from the inside, but he _really_ did not want to have to resort to that. In response, Freva fearlessly approached the queen's head and lifted an eyelid, revealing a glazed eye. She gathered up a blast in her mouth at the highest power she could manage and let loose.

The queen didn't even stir. After the smoke cleared, Jiod looked at Freva in awe. In place of the queen's eye was a hollow crater reaching down into her skull. Freva blasted it again, and again. The queen finally began to overpower whatever was in the arrow and stirred with a shudder that Jiod could feel through the air. He abruptly realised he was supposed to _help_ , and set himself to digging into another eye, careless of the disgusting goop he was clawing at.

The queen shuddered again and let out a mighty groan. Jiod slid off her face and flung himself aloft, but Freva was up to her tail in the queen's eyeball. Jiod looked away at the sight; he might be used to corpses, but the sight was too reminiscent of a maggot infesting someone's eye socket.

The queen slowly stood on all fours, shuddering and screeching. Another kind of shout reached him and he looked towards the shores to see the Viking's flotilla run aground, a particular Night Fury chained to one of them. _Don't worry, we'll get you Toothless,_ Jiod thought. He personally thought the name ridiculous; that silarion was anything _but_ toothless. Jiod couldn't believe they'd missed the approach of a whole fleet of Vikings, but then again they had been paying extremely close attention to the Red Death.

A series of enormous boulders smashed against the queen, who didn't even seem to feel them and instead tried to flame her own face. When that failed, she brought up her paws to try to dig Freva out, a fruitless endeavour. The pain looked to be disrupting the queen's judgement, as she then proceeded to bash her head against the volcano. A constant high pitched keening started rising from her throat, shattering several glass items on the Viking ships. With a sudden focus, the queen leapt into the air with Jiod in close pursuit. She soon reached a height that defied logic. The wind suddenly ceased. The air was so cold Jiod shivered even through his new scaled form and inner heart, and they were surrounded by an oppressive darkness. Jiod looked up and saw the strangest sight he'd seen in his life. Spread out above him was a blanket of stars, so many more than he'd seen before, glimmering coldly down at him. He felt a faint disapproval emanating from them, a sense that he'd done something wrong and they were sternly glaring down at him until… and then the Red Death let out a sheet of fire which quickly guttered out against the queer darkness. Jiod found it harder and harder to breathe, and was more than relieved when the queen suddenly dived straight down. She reached the clouds and kept going, and it wasn't until they had almost reached the artificial fog that Jiod realised the queen wasn't stopping.

"Freva! Freva, get out, she's—" was all Jiod managed before the queen hit the ground. An enormous explosion billowed out from the point of impact, sending dust and other flaming debris straight into Jiod's face and outright killing most of the Vikings on the shore.

"Freva, are you…" Jiod began, then trailed off. The skull of the Red Death cracked in two, revealing a charred and broken form curled up where the brain would be, black scorch marks and shattered bone surrounding it, clue to the massive amount of plasma blasts she'd gotten off.

"You'll be fine… we died before, this is hardly new… we won, we'll just be taken to the present…" Jiod muttered to himself, flying over a scene of complete devastation. The roiling explosion from the Red Death was just beginning to clear, revealing only the odd spar or two still afloat in the water, all that remained of the Viking's (admittedly small) fleet. Charred and crushed corpses lined the rocky shore, Vikings who'd been expecting a fight instead faced with their own massacre. Jiod began to panic; how would the entire attack force dying affect the present? He wasn't able to contemplate it for long, as if head began to spin, and the scene disappeared before him…


	38. Chapter 38

Jiod's head whirled, and he felt his feet holding in a rigid position. He felt the urge to vomit, but after everything he'd gone through with Toothless, it had no choice but to quickly pass. Jiod waited, concentrating on anything his senses could pick it. It was nauseating, but paid off. His hearing cleared itself first…

"—then I will have wasted two very valuable rings, and you _will_ help held accountable for..." Gothi's voice trailed off.

Jiod opened his eyes. Things were extremely blurry and colourless again. He could see Freva standing beside him, and turned to let out a loud cheer—they deserved it, after all. She looked confused, and faintly… see through?

"F-Freva?" Jiod tried, faintly surprised he'd been able to get even her name out. His throat felt scratchy and weird, and a pounding headache lurked in his skull, ready to leap out and claim him the moment he paid too much attention to it. Jiod reached out, and felt he must have missed. To his blurry, unfocused vision, it looked almost like his hand went straight _through_ her. Freva moved her mouth in response, but the words were a mystery to Jiod. Then her form wavered like an image of the moon on a rippling lake, and disappeared. Jiod stopped moving, stunned. Gothi maintained her shocked silence as well. The house was almost perfectly quiet, only the clattering sound of a bracelet whirling on the floor as it tried to settle and the faint buzzing of playing Terrible Terrors interrupting it.

The bracelet eventually stopped spinning, and Gothi broke the silence. "I take it you were successful?"

"W-where did… what… we _won_!" Jiod said, gazing at the spot where Freva had been. A beam of light from a window shone through the place where her head had been, revealing motes of dust that, no matter how long Jiod stared at them, failed to turn into Freva. "How…"

"You're wounded," Gothi said, and grabbed Jiod's arm. She peered at it for some time, clucking under her tongue and viewing it from different angles. "Is it life threatening?" Jiod said.

"I don't think—" Gothi began.

"Then I don't care," Jiod said duly. Gothi sharply rapped his head with her staff. "Stop! You're alive. Live." Jiod didn't know how to respond. "There are… scales… on you," Gothi abruptly changed tack.

Jiod blinked. "Uh… what?" Gothi tapped his arm. Strangely, Jiod barely felt it.

"They're spreading. Fast. You have… some time. It may actually kill you after all," Gothi said, then shoved him out the door. "Go. There's nothing I can do. Mention I can talk and I eviscerate you." With that, Gothi slammed the door on his face.

"So, how'd it go?" Hiccup said. Toothless bounded up to Jiod and rubbed against his side, purring. Jiod petted him, but Toothless could tell his heart wasn't in it and stared up at him with those wide green eyes… A tear fell from Jiod's face and went unnoticed by the other Viking, though Toothless had noticed and was now crouching down, frills dropping.

"Freva have the Grimora then? I guess it makes sense, they do get sorta dormant when they attach to a human…" Hiccup looked at Jiod, who still hadn't responded. "Hey, you okay mister trader?"

"Trader?" Jiod said blankly.

"Yeah, you know, you trade…" Hiccup said, obviously waiting for Jiod to realise something. Jiod just stood there, not waiting, for that would imply an expectation of something happening. No, the word for it was… dormant.

"Those… those weren't Grimora, were they?" Hiccup said softly.

"She's dead," Jiod said, and then the tears showed themselves, rolling down his cheeks in large tracts. "She's dead, Nero's dead, the invasion force is dead, everyone's dead. We were going to save… we were going to save them. And now I'm probably dead." Jiod walked away, leaving Hiccup to stare after him. Toothless whimpered in sympathy. "It's okay bud, it's just… it's okay," Hiccup said.

§

Jiod felt he was drifting aimlessly. Couldn't go to his tribe, they hated him for some reason. Couldn't hunt silarions, Nero was dead. Couldn't lose himself in an adventure, his skiff was gone. Holly… Holly was gone. He'd lost her so long ago, and yet he'd held out hope that someday…

Jiod learned to lose himself in the rhythms of Berk. Rise early, train, find a silarion (he refused to think of them as dragons, not after Nero), wait for it to refuse him, help fish every once in a while. His emotions never faded. Instead, they curled up inside him, dried and shrivelled up without anything to direct them at, yet needing only the barest hint of water to spring back to life, fresh as if they'd only just settled. Jiod took to setting his face in an inscrutable mask whenever someone might see him. The denizens of Berk who took an interest in him warned him that it wasn't healthy, that he needed to find some release, but he ignored them until one fateful day when he stumbled into a cove in the forest. An invisible catch released himself in his mind. He remembered being in Toothless's mind, Hiccup finding them…

Tears he'd kept long buried in himself for all those months since that day they'd killed the Red Death and Freva had died finally evacuated. A river dripped form his face, silently and steadily, marching on for hours until the sun faded into glimmering twilight, then into a blanket of stars. An indeterminable time later, Jiod stood up, feeling tired and drained, but… accepting, somehow. He turned a watery smile on the stars. At that moment, the scales that had been creeping up his arm jolted into motion. They covered him head to toe before he could shout, then he was out like a light. No one would find him before he woke up, most assuming he'd either made himself a boat or taken his own life. As more months passed, a silver lump grew in a forgotten haven.

§

Jiod stood on the edge of the cliff overlooking Berk where he and Freva had started their quest to save the future by subverting the past. _It worked,_ he finally realised. _It might have had more consequences than we'd thought, but… it worked_. With that, he spread his wings. No one noticed him. Only a cursory attempt at a watch existed. After all, if something didn't need doing, Vikings didn't consider it their place to do it. But even if they had, all the other silarions sprawled over the rooftops would probably attract their attention more. Moonlight glinted off his silver scales as he surveyed the world before him. There was so much good he could do, but first he needed to find the problems that needed fixing. Jiod catapulted himself into the night sky, looking forwards to finding distant lands. After all, anything could happen…

* * *

 **And here it ends! Thank you so much to those who reviewed, favorited, followed, or even just took the time to read this. It took me more time and effort than I thought it would, but it was worth it just to have this finished. If enough people want an epilogue, or even a sequel, I might consider it, but I think my first fic's finished! Thank you and good night! *bows***


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